


They Spoke With Their Hands

by CreativeComplex



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cassandra Cain Needs a Hug, Cassandra Cain is amazing, Crossover, David Cain - mentioned, Deaf Clint Barton, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Help, I'm Bad At Tagging, Mild Language, My First Fanfic, Not Canon Compliant, POV Multiple, POV Original Character, Past Child Abuse, Sign Language, Weird Gotham Bullshit (TM), at all, but just a little bit, she gets one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 26,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24684595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativeComplex/pseuds/CreativeComplex
Summary: If she's being honest, Gotham is not Natasha's favorite place. It's perpetually damp, noisy as all hell, filled to the brim with lunatics in masks, and she's not allowed to stab the men who try to proposition her because there's a non-zero chance that a man in a bat costume will show up to stop her. She would be fine with that, but SHIELD would not, and she would have to do paperwork.Clint, predictably, loves the place.But whatever her complaints may be, she can't say it's ever boring.((Basically, Cass kind of adopts a bunch of other street kids while she's homeless in Gotham after leaving her father. Then Natasha and Clint meet her on a routine mission and they bond.))
Relationships: Barbara Gordon & Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain & Original Character(s), Cassandra Cain and Clint Barton, Cassandra Cain and Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Jason Todd, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 101
Kudos: 173





	1. Surprise!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CJedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CJedi/gifts).



> Okay, this is AU in two ways. First, the MCU (before all the superhumans start showing up, during Clint and Natasha's SHIELD agent days) and DCU (no particular canon, but between Cass leaving her father and her getting brought into the batfam) exist in the same universe. Second, during Cass's time on the streets of Gotham, she builds a family... gang... thing with some other street kids, because you can't tell me that Cass could ever turn away a kid who needed help. Hopefully all that is clear in the story, but I wanted to put it here just in case.
> 
> The stuff in italics and single quotes is ASL. ASL has different grammar than spoken English (fewer articles and sentence particles, for one thing), but here I've essentially translated it to spoken English grammar and syntax. I think the name signs I chose follow the rules for that, but please tell me if I got it wrong! Natasha doesn't have a name sign because Clint hasn't found one he thinks fits yet.

If she's being honest, Gotham is not Natasha's favorite place. It's perpetually damp, noisy as all hell, filled to the brim with lunatics in masks, and she's not allowed to stab the men who try to proposition her because there's a non-zero chance that a man in a bat costume will show up to stop her. She would be fine with that, but SHIELD would not, and she would have to do paperwork.

Clint, predictably, loves the place.

But whatever her complaints may be, she can't say it's ever boring.

It's Clint who notices the girl. She's small, petite even, with Asian features, and she's working her way down the street pickpocketing the people she passes so skillfully that if she wasn't looking for it Natasha wouldn't even have noticed. Still, while the level of skill is impressive, it's not what Nat is worried about right now. What Nat is worried about, and what Clint pointed out to her in the first place, is that the girl moves like an assassin. There's a fluid grace to her movements, a careful and measured confidence that speaks of several years of training. Her long coat and the layers that cover the rest of her body could hide it from most people, but Natasha and Clint are not most people. She also can’t possibly be older than 17.

_‘Red Room?’_ Clint signs. Natasha thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. It’s possible, if unlikely, that some of the madams escaped when she and Clint took a SHIELD team for backup and went to destroy the Red Room, but the girl just doesn’t fit the profile. Completely un-seductive, clearly poor and probably homeless by the state of her clothing, and while she’s definitely trained to kill, she’s not trained to look like she’s not trained to kill.

_‘Wrong type of training,’_ she signs back. _‘But I’d definitely like to know who_ did _train her.’_ Clint nods back and they know each other well enough by now that they don’t bother to discuss it further. Instead, they begin to tail the girl, cautiously, careful to seem like they haven’t noticed her at all. Civilians flow around them - they pass three fruit stands, two drug dealers, and one taco truck before the girl disappears down an alley.

Hmm. She’s not certain the girl has noticed them, but it’s very possible. A quick glance at Clint confirms he’s come to the same conclusion.

They don’t pause long before they follow, but Natasha takes a moment to look a little closer at her partner. He has that look he sometimes gets, the one that reminds her of a hunting dog with a scent or a sheepdog with a flock - utterly focused on the task at hand. She smiles, just a little. There are a lot of questions here, and just as many concerns. But Clint is with her, a steady, stable presence at her side, and they’ll be okay. Somehow, they always are.

\-------

Cassandra is worried. She feels like she’s being watched, and worse, she’s been feeling that way for the last mile. Someone is following her.

She doesn’t like it.

She grows more cautious about her lifts in case it's a cop, stays unobtrusive, and she hasn’t taken so much as a piece of lint from a pocket for the last three blocks, but the feeling doesn’t go away. She tries to figure out who it might be, but looking over her shoulder is a good way to make sure whoever it is knows they’ve been noticed. She searches for a word.

... Damn! That’s it, that’s the word she wanted. Damn.

Well, trying to disappear into the crowd isn’t working. Time for something else. Cassandra knows the streets of Gotham better than she knows the language that clamors around her. Words have always been a struggle for her, but places? Places are easy. It doesn’t matter that she can’t read the street names when she knows exactly where she is on sight. Besides, the alley she’s just ducked into is small enough to go unacknowledged as a street by the signs anyway, so it doesn’t really matter at all. Clearly trying to seem normal is out - she’s been trying for the last few blocks and she knows she’s still being followed. So that means she can stop trying and turn all her attention to shaking her pursuer.

Ha! Pursuer. That’s a word she learned from Colin, who’s been helping her with her reading since he joined her group… family… gang… whatever-it-is. They still haven't decided. She’s proud of herself for remembering the word.

Now, to get back to him and the rest without bringing uninvited guests along...

\-------

This is absolutely not what Clint was expecting when their handler sent them to Gotham to collect intel on a drug ring. It is, however, a perfect illustration of why he likes Gotham so much. It’s like the city deliberately goes out of its way to make every trip as weird as possible. It’s deeply unpredictable in a way that most people find unpleasant, but Clint has always loved surprises.

On the other hand, the surprise that he and Nat are currently tailing is doing a damn good job of trying to lose them. She’s definitely noticed them, there’s no question about that at this point, so it’s become a really intense game of hide-and-seek-tag, and they don’t know quite how high the stakes are. So he’s not sure how much he likes this particular surprise.

The girl is good - scary-good, the kind of good you only get out of decades of experience or a great deal of pain - but so are he and Natasha, and there are two of them. So far, that’s been enough to let them keep up with the girl, even on what is increasingly clearly her home turf.

Gotham breeds ‘em different, that’s for sure.

So far, the girl has doubled back five times, changed her clothing on the move once, climbed through a window and led them on a rather dramatic chase through an apartment building that ended when she _jumped out of a third story window to lose them_ and kept going like she wasn’t even _winded,_ taken them through a park and tried to disappear into the trees, and walked through four different fights. He’s pretty sure the only reason she hasn’t tried to vanish into the sewers is that there’s apparently a cannibalistic crocodile man down there.

Gotham is a never-ending delight.

But Natasha, beautiful, terrifying woman that she is, managed to get a tracker on the girl while they chased her through a fight, where she had assumed the bump to her side came from one of the brawlers. They’ve been deliberately slowing down for the last five minutes. She’s good enough to be suspicious if they just vanish, but if they can seem like they’re getting tired and a little sloppy... It’s not even entirely a lie - Nat’s doing fine, because she’s Nat, but Clint has been running for the last 45 minutes and he’d really like to stop now, please. He stumbles as he goes around a corner, plays it up, and pauses for a few seconds to lean against a wall. Then he’s off again, but slower, and when he goes around the next corner and doesn’t see her right away, he staggers to a halt and gives up. He sees Nat, on the roof a few blocks behind him, do the same. They’ll give her time to get home before they find her again.


	2. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So she’s dealing with two unknowns - she’d tried to get a proper read on them once she gave up pretending she hadn’t noticed them, but irritatingly (Colin likes that word), they were moving too fast most of the time.
> 
> A man and a woman, she was sure of that much, and only those two. They hadn’t seemed hostile, more curious, maybe, but she doesn’t want anybody with the skills to keep up with her for an hour anywhere near her home or her family. And something about the man’s body language right at the end… it was off. If she’d stuck around to watch, maybe she’d be sure of why, but she’d been too focused on getting away. She might be a little more careful for the next few days. Just to be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's so short. The muses are fickle. There's more coming, but my brain insists this is the right length for this chapter. It's kind of an interlude, because things are going to pick up a lot next chapter.
> 
> As always, thanks to CJedi for editing and fresh-baked challah and listening to me talk out my ideas for hours at a time. You're the best, love.

It takes Cass another hour to get home. She could have been there in 20 minutes, but she wants to think - and to make  _ sure- _ sure she's lost them.

It's... concerning that anyone with the training to keep up with her has noticed her. It’s been a few years since her father sent anyone to look for her, and they came back completely empty-handed. She’d considered beating them up to send a message, but her life is a lot easier when no one of the type who’d take work from David Cain has reason to be angry at her. So it’s probably nothing to do with her dad.

It’s also probably not one of the Bats - they don’t bother with little criminals like her and her group. Petty theft and trespassing aren’t even on their radar. And there’s no villain she knows of who'd stalk their victims. Most just go out and grab somebody. The only one she can think of would be Deathstroke, and that’s only if he has a contract. She can’t think of anyone with both means and motive (she learned those words from cop shows on TV and hasn't had occasion to use them) to take out a contract on her with  _ Deathstroke. _ She’d think her father again, but he knows she’s one of the only people in the world who’d win that fight, if it came to it. 

So she’s dealing with two unknowns - she’d tried to get a proper read on them once she gave up pretending she hadn’t noticed them, but irritatingly (Colin likes that word), they were moving too fast most of the time.

A man and a woman, she was sure of that much, and only those two. They hadn’t seemed hostile, more curious, maybe, but she doesn’t want anybody with the skills to keep up with her for an hour anywhere near her home or her family. And something about the man’s body language right at the end… it was off. If she’d stuck around to watch, maybe she’d be sure of why, but she’d been too focused on getting away. She might be a little more careful for the next few days. Just to be safe.

So she takes the long way back to the Narrows, where Aiyisha had managed to find them all an apartment whose owner had died with two months' rent already paid. They've been squatting there for the last three weeks. Centralized heating (a term she learned from A.J.) is not to be taken for granted. 

She doesn't see the man and woman again, nor does the sense of being watched return, so she decides it's safe to go home. 

... But only after she does a thorough check around the block. Just to be safe. 

Finding nothing, she heaves a sigh of relief, and goes home. 

\-------

Anna, as usual, is the last one to know Cass is home. This is, as usual, for a few reasons. 

The first, of course, is that she spends most of the day in the back room, so she doesn't see the door open. The second is that nobody here has the money to pay for hearing aids, so she doesn't  _ hear  _ the door open, either. 

The third is that she's currently working with A.J. and Sofia on their ASL, and all of the kids who live here know not to leave Anna's classes without permission, so they don't go running out the moment  _ they _ hear the door. 

She smiles proudly at A.J. when he signs  _ ‘Cass is home,’  _ without even thinking about it and shoos him and Sofia out to welcome back the leader of their family. She's only a little slower in climbing to her feet to follow. 

She smiles as she watches the younger kids mob Cass on her way to the floorboard they've been using to hide trinkets they can't fence yet. Cass has the kind of bleeding heart that Anna would worry was going to get her killed if she hadn't seen Cass  _ literally dodge a bullet  _ before. 

But she has, even if she sometimes thinks she must have hallucinated the incident, so instead she just counts herself lucky to know the girl. They're all lucky, really. Anna isn't sure she would have lived to her ripe old age of 17 if Cass hadn't decided, with the kind of unstoppable certainty she gets about these things, to adopt her. She knows the others are the same. So she's glad to be here. 

Even if Morgan won't stop stealing her clothes.

Even when everybody else turns to stare at the door because of something she couldn't hear. 


	3. Guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl moved like a fucking tidal wave the second she opened the door. Even Nat didn't have time to react. Clint is starting to think he maybe doesn't like this surprise. 
> 
> Also, apparently the terrifying assassin child knows sign language.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this is probably the last chapter I'm going to post today. I have more of the story written, but I want to have time to edit properly (which for me usually means 'ignore the piece I'm editing for at least a day so I can come back to it with fresh eyes') and hopefully make myself a buffer. I really have no idea what my posting schedule is going to look like, I'm too new to this format, but I'm hoping to update fairly frequently. This story does have a definite plot and ending planned out, but I'm not sure how many chapters it's going to take along the way. We'll see, I guess
> 
> Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy, thank you for reading. If you have thoughts about the fic, please, PLEASE comment, I'd love to hear them. I'm always down for some external validation, constructive criticism, whatever ;p

Clint is laughing. Natasha can see him from her new vantage point on the ground, and his face is arranged in the careful 'who, me?' expression he uses when he wants her to believe he didn't steal her breakfast. 

Nat swears revenge and turns her attention to the girl who dropped and pinned her so efficiently she didn't even have time to react. She's not sure, even if she hadn't been surprised, that she would have won that fight, and that fact is honestly more concerning than the fact that she just lost this one. 

Clint had insisted on knocking on the door, on the basis of "manners are important when dealing with baby assassins! Wouldn't want to spook her," and Natasha, foolishly trusting in her partner's judgement, had agreed. Never again.

On the other hand, the pin the girl has her in doesn't hurt, and won't unless Nat moves. 

Or, as she finds out a moment later, if Clint moves to help her. She allows herself a grunt of pain and Clint freezes in his approach, backs up a few steps, and raises his hands placatingly. The pain in her shoulder eases.

The laughter on his face is gone now, and his voice is low, soothing, like he's talking to a cornered animal. "Hey, hey, okay. No need for that, please no maiming my partner. We're not here to hurt you, okay?" As he talks, he begins to sign - probably to ask if he should call for backup - and the pain is suddenly back, accompanied by the first words they've heard out of the girl.

_"Don't,"_ she snarls. _"No_ sign."

Well. Alright then.

\-------

The girl moved like a fucking tidal wave the second she opened the door. Even Nat didn't have time to react. Clint is starting to think he maybe doesn't like this surprise. 

Also, apparently the terrifying assassin child knows sign language. Hmm…

"Can I sign to _you?"_ he asks the girl, trying his hardest to seem non-threatening. She tilts her head, narrows her eyes at him, but after a moment, she nods. 

_‘We're not here to hurt you,’_ he begins again, because that seems like an important thing to stress. _‘We're in Gotham for information, that's all. We don't even know who you are.’_ Her eyes are fixed on him, and he's a little unnerved by the way she seems to be looking right through his words and into his g-ddamn soul. But he doesn't flinch, and her gaze doesn't waver. Then she moves again, and before he can worry, she's standing up, and Natasha is free to climb to her feet. 

_‘You okay?’_ he signs, not because it's going to keep the girl from understanding, obviously, but because his deaf accent gets worse when he's rattled, and right now he's not confident in his ability to form words with his mouth. 

Natasha is the untouchable one. He's seen her lose, yes, but not often, and only at a severe disadvantage. It's… uncomfortable, to be reminded that there are some people - not many, but some - who are simply _better_ than she is. And now that he's allowing himself to process that, he can't say he likes it. 

But she smiles and says "fine," accompanies it with the correct sign because she's always been good about realizing when he's having trouble with his hearing aids or just with processing what he hears, and the girl is still watching them, wary, but not hostile. 

"Wait here," she says, and something isn't quite right about it, like the words don't fit right in her mouth, but then she's ducked back into the apartment. His aids pick up a sudden increase in noise coming from the apartment, but he can't piece together any specifics. After a few minutes, she steps into the hall again. 

She tilts her head, birdlike, and for a moment he feels like she's looking into his soul again. And then she nods, and beckons them through the door. 

"Come. Talk."

\-------

Her kids are watching the door carefully when Cass ducks back into the apartment, and she can’t help smiling a little bit. Aiyisha is closest to the door holding a switchblade. A.J. has retreated next to Morgan and drawn a knife of his own. Eli, ever the thoughtful one, has grabbed the group’s go-bag and Anna has drawn Colin and Sofia, the youngest of the bunch, closest to the window, which all of them know how to climb through. Colin would have to navigate it with his limp and crutches, of course, but all of them know how to help each other with things like that.

Cass is... less worried than she could be. The man was telling the truth when he said they weren’t here to hurt her, and he wasn’t hiding anything like an intent to hurt one of the other kids here. That’s good. But she still doesn’t want them near her family. Still, it’s good to see her group protecting each other. They’re always good about that.

“We have… guests,” she says out loud, then switches to ASL, which has always been easier for her. _‘Dangerous but not here to hurt us. We’ll be going in the back room. I want all of you to get your personal go-bags and gather in and around the kitchen. Don’t get near the visitors. If we’re not out of the back room in two hours, Eli can check on us. Stay alert and take care of each other, and don’t worry too much. They don’t seem bad, just_ **_could_ ** _be dangerous if they wanted to. Go.’_ There’s a pause, and then the room explodes into movement.

Once all of the kids have their go-bags and are gathered around the kitchen, she steps back out into the hallway, forming the words in her mind ahead of time so they sound more natural. “Come. Talk.” Then she leads them inside.

Their faces and bodies betray shock, even if the woman tries to cover it, when they see her family. That fits with what they said about not knowing who she was, since it seems like they tracked her back here with no idea what they would find. That’s probably good. She still makes sure to stay between them and her kids as she points them into the back room. She follows them in and closes the door, sitting down gracefully on the floor and beckoning them to do the same. The woman does quickly, although the man shifts uncomfortably before shrugging and sitting down.

Hmm... he relies on his eyes a lot, Cass thinks. Likes to be able to see. Likes to be up high. Well, it’s not like there’s anything in this room she doesn’t want him to see - four bed rolls, some scattered clothes, and Morgan’s tattered (she likes that word, it sounds like what it means) prayer mat. She can afford to be nice. “You can... stand. If you want. If... more comfortable.” Damn. That didn’t quite come out right. It didn’t sound normal enough. Oh, well, it’s not like she was going to hide it for long. 

The man looks startled for a moment, then grins and hops to his feet, retreating to a corner that lets him watch the door, but is far enough away that she only needs to tilt her head a little to look at him. _‘Thanks,’_ he signs, and it’s Cass’s turn to be a little surprised. So he’s already figured out she’d rather sign. She’s impressed he noticed. Also, a little proud of using the word ‘impressed’ - she read it a long time ago, when she was just starting to learn her words in the library. It’s a good word.

The woman has been sitting quietly, although she moved so she could see the man when he stood up. They care about each other, that’s for sure. Kind of like she cares for the kids in the other room. Like family. And they really don’t seem like they’re going to be a danger to her family. She thinks about the ease in the way they treat each other, the way they’ve moved so even now they’re covering each others’ blind spots, the way the man backed off in the hallway the second the woman was in pain. She thinks about the way they seemed shocked to see the other kids, but also, she thinks, a little worried, like they wanted to know if they could help.

_‘You’re welcome,’_ she signs back with a smile. She points at herself and fingerspells _‘Cassandra.'_ Then she points at the man. _‘You?’_

\-------

Natasha has a moment of actual panic when she walks in and sees eight other children. Good G-d, _is_ it another Red Room? She’d really rather not have to dismantle another child soldier factory.

But no, no, none of them move the right way, and the assassin girl very deliberately places herself protectively in front of them. Nat still isn’t sure how the girl knows them, but at least they weren’t trained together. She breathes a quick sigh of relief and follows Clint into the room the girl points them towards, lets her close the door behind them.

The room is small and grimy, like the rest of what Nat has seen of the apartment. The girl gestures for them to sit, and Nat sees no reason not to, so she does. Clint shifts in the way Nat knows means he’d rather stand before he follows suit, but the girl tells him he can stand if he’d be more comfortable. 

That’s interesting, because Nat knows people tend to have a hard time reading her partner. He acts like he wears his heart on his sleeve, emotions thrown all over the place, and that makes most people think that one surface layer they see is all there is to be seen. It’s a better defense than simply hiding his emotions. And this girl, who’s met them twice for a total of maybe two hours, sees right through it. Very interesting indeed.

What’s almost as interesting is that she clearly struggles with speech. She doesn’t have a deaf accent the way Clint does, but she seems to prefer ASL to any spoken language. Perhaps she was raised by deaf parents? Although with her age and the kind of training she has, Nat isn’t sure how much she was raised and how much she was trained. Clint has picked up on the girl’s preference for sign language too, and signs his thanks for her concession about the standing, and the girl seems surprised and a little grateful for that.

And finally, _finally,_ they have a name. Cassandra. No last name, but that’s no surprise. Nat wouldn’t give her last real last name - or even her real first name, honestly - to any given stranger either. It’s still good to have something to call her other than ‘the girl.’ Clint is signing back his name already, along with his name sign - a _C_ next to the eye. Natasha follows his lead on this one and actually _does_ give her name, both out loud and in sign, although she doesn’t have a name sign to accompany it.

  
Cassandra smiles at them, small but genuine, but then the wariness returns to her face as she asks the question she’s probably been dying to ask since they started tailing her earlier: _‘why?’_


	4. Questions and Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once she starts asking, the questions seem to flow from Cass’s brain directly to her hands, and she can’t seem to wait for an answer. ‘Why? Why follow me? Who are you? What information are you here for? What kind of job do you do? How were you able to follow me earlier? How did you find me here? What do you want? Are you going to report us to the cops? Are you some kind of cops? Do you-’ she manages to cut herself off before she finishes that question, but what she wants to ask is ‘do you know my father? Did he send you?’ They don’t seem like the type, but she can’t help wondering. On the other hand, no matter if they mean to hurt her or not, she doesn’t trust them enough yet to ask them that.
> 
> Yet. She doesn’t trust them enough yet. But her gut is telling her, the way it did with Colin and Skye and Aiyisha and all the others, that she might trust them enough someday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, I know I said I was done posting for the day, but... uh... I lied? The muses have been exceptionally kind today (which is a nice change to the way I sometimes have to hunt them down and duct tape them to a chair to get any writing done). So it looks like y'all get one more chapter today, AND I get that buffer I wanted. Yay!

Once she starts asking, the questions seem to flow from Cass’s brain directly to her hands, and she can’t seem to wait for an answer. _‘Why? Why follow me? Who are you? What information are you here for? What kind of job do you do? How were you able to follow me earlier? How did you find me here? What do you want? Are you going to report us to the cops? Are_ you _some kind of cops? Do you-’_ she manages to cut herself off before she finishes that question, but what she wants to ask is ‘do you know my father? Did he send you?’ They don’t seem like the type, but she can’t help wondering. On the other hand, no matter if they mean to hurt her or not, she doesn’t trust them enough yet to ask them that.

Yet. She doesn’t trust them enough _yet._ But her gut is telling her, the way it did with Colin and Skye and Aiyisha and all the others, that she might trust them enough someday.

The man is laughing at the sudden flow of questions, and holds up a hand. _‘Slow down,’_ he signs back, _‘we’re happy to answer questions but you’ve got to give us time.’_ Cass smiles bashfully - a word she learned from Sofia, who really likes Disney movies - and nods.

_‘Okay. Why did you follow me?’_ she asks first. The man pauses, thinking about his answer, but not to form a lie, just to find the words to explain. 

Before he answers, though, the woman pipes up. “Can we trade questions? I think we may have just as many questions about you as you have about us.” Cass studies her for a moment, but she’s not lying, and it really seems like the only reason she’s asking is curiosity.

Still, just to be safe, Cass asks her directly. _‘Just curious? Not going to report to someone?’_ and the woman shakes her head with a small smile. Cass nods. Telling the truth.

_‘Okay then,’_ she signs. _‘But you still go first. Why did you follow me?’_

The man - Clint - answers. _‘We could tell you had assassin training and wanted to know who trained you._ He pauses and then points at the wom - at Natasha. _‘She was trained by some bad people, and after she got away, we went back to kill them. We wanted to know if we had to do that again._

Cass’s eyes widen as he signs. She... can’t deny that a world without David Cain would be a better world, but she loves him. Much as she hates him, much as she knows she shouldn’t, he’s her father and she loves him. She wishes she didn’t.

She shakes off the thoughts because Clint is asking his question. Unsurprisingly, it’s _‘who trained you?’_

Fuck. Cass doesn’t curse often, but Skye’s creativity with curses knows no bounds, and Aiyisha’s is almost as good, so she’s learned how to. Then the woman raises an eyebrow and Cass realizes she swore out loud. Double fuck.

She could tell them, but she doesn’t want them to die trying to hunt down her father, and she doesn’t want them to kill him, either. She could lie, but she’d rather not and she’s pretty sure the woman could tell anyway. She could refuse to answer, but that might end the game, and she still has so many questions…

She’ll say this out loud because she wants them to know it matters. “I will tell... you, but. You have to... promise. Promise not go... after him.” The man is surprised, a little angry, but not at her. The woman just looks sad. Cass thinks she might understand, just a little. They look at each other, having some sort of silent talk with their eyes, and then turn back to face Cassandra.

“We won’t,” says the woman, the man signing the same thing. Cass sighs, relieved, and closes her eyes. She switches back to sign, to the language she knows best, and tells someone, for the first time in her life, a little bit of what happened to her.

_‘I was trained by my father. David Cain.’_

\-------

Natasha knows the name _David Cain_ . Clint can see it in the sharp intake of breath, in the way her muscles are so perfectly relaxed it can only be the result of her trying not to be tense. Natasha knows the name _David Cain_ and the way she reacts to it makes Clint kind of wish she didn’t.

He watches, worried and a little lost as Nat turns the perfectly blank face she uses sometimes in interrogations on the girl. “I wasn't aware he had a child,” she says evenly, and it’s just as telling as her face that she says it aloud before realizing what she forgot and adding the ASL a moment later.

The girl makes a face so complicated that Clint doesn’t think he could untangle the emotions there if he had a fucking year to do it. She answers out loud, too, in the halting, careful way that makes him wonder what her first language is. She prefers ASL but doesn’t do well with English, but she doesn’t speak with any discernible accent... and that’s a mystery for later. She’s talking. 

“He... didn’t want anyone to... know. I wasn’t -” her voice breaks, and it might be the first indication of weakness this girl - Cassandra - has ever shown them. Her mouth twitches, and she forces her face back into calm with a visible effort. “I wasn’t... _perfect..._ yet.” She spits the word _perfect_ like it’s poison on her tongue, and Clint still doesn’t quite understand, but he’s starting to get a picture, and it isn’t pretty. Still, he’d like to know who this guy is by more than just the way he clearly treated (treats? G-d, he hopes not, hopes she’s out of there and far away from him) his daughter.

“Uh...” he says out loud, to get their attention, then switches to sign, _‘hate to interrupt, but could you share with the class, maybe? Who’s this Cain guy?’_

Natasha sighs as she answers, glancing back at the girl as she signs like she’s checking to make sure she’s getting this right. _‘David Cain, one of the most dangerous assassins on Earth. Known to work with the League of Assassins sometimes. Very little information otherwise. And... apparently has a daughter._

Clint feels his eyes widen and his mouth form into a silent _‘O’_ as he processes that. Okay, well, the League are a bunch of creepy fuckers and anyone who works with them is probably similar. Plus, nobody gets to be ‘one of the most dangerous assassins on Earth,’ without being kinda awful, or, as in Nat’s case, kinda brainwashed. So that fits pretty well with what he’s learning about the guy from Cassandra.

Cassandra, who’s turned her eyes to the ground like she’s ashamed, like he and Nat are about to reject her, and _dammit_ now he really wants to hug the girl. _The sins of the father,_ he thinks, a little dazed. It’s a lot to take in and if he’s being honest, she reminds him far too much of Nat. But he’d rather not be too emotionally honest with himself right now, because this is kind of important and he should be paying attention to Cassandra, not his own memories of Nat when he brought her in. 

Still, now that he’s seen them, the parallels between Cassandra and his partner are hard to ignore. There’s the similarities in their backgrounds, of course, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the way they both use physical relaxation to cover up incredible tension, or the way they both move like every motion is calculated. The way they both act like nobody in their right mind would trust them. The way they act like they can’t trust themselves. Like any moment they could turn into monsters. Cassandra is studying her hands now, and he sees her start to pick absently at her nails, the space under them, the space Clint knows from experience is hardest to clean blood out of.

Dammit! He did _not_ sign up to be this sad when he came to Gotham.

Screw standing up. He walks over and plops down, legs crossed, in front of her. “Hey,” he says, as gently as he can. “Look at me?”

\-------

“Hey,” the man’s voice is saying softly. “Look at me?” The tone he used in the hallway, the cornered-animal, let’s-all-calm-down-here tone is back, but there’s no disgust there, no revulsion. 

No fear.

Cassandra isn’t sure she’s ever met someone who knew what she was and wasn’t afraid. Even her father, the man who made her this way, was just a little wary around her. He knew what he was building in his ‘One Who Is All,’ and he knew that if she turned on him, like she finally did, he couldn’t stop her. Even he was afraid of her.

She finds her eyes lifting to meet Clint’s almost against her will, afraid of what she’ll see, but daring to hope, just a little, that the lack of fear in his voice will be real. Her eyes lock onto his and he smiles, a strange, crooked thing, but just as honest as everything else about him. No disgust. No revulsion. No fear.

Then his hands begin to move. _‘Your dad sounds like a real dick,’_ is the first thing he signs, and Cass can’t help it. She laughs.

This man is crazy, or stupid, or something. There’s a word Morgan likes... delusive? Delusioned? Delusional, that’s it. (Words are hard.) He’s crazy or stupid or delusional, but he’s not afraid.

She signs back the first thing she can think of: _‘oh, he totally is.’_


	5. See You Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint’s hands are flying, as are Cassandra’s. Nat has switched to speaking aloud so that the other two can hear her part of the conversation while watching each others’ words. Questions are volleyed back and forth.
> 
> ‘What are you doing in Gotham?’
> 
> “Recon mission on a nasty looking drug.”
> 
> ‘By which she means snooping on a drug ring that claims their drugs can give people superpowers,’ Clint adds. ‘Who are all the kids out there?’
> 
> Cassandra smiles at that, looking for all the world like a parent who’s been given the opportunity to brag about their children. She says the names aloud, accompanied by fingerspelling. “Colin. A.J. Eli. Anna. Morgan. Aiyisha. Sofia. Skye.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I still have no particular posting schedule, but I know this is all I'll be posting today. Sorry about that, but I posted most of what I had already written yesterday, so I'm now slowed to the speed at which I can write. 
> 
> WARNING for a little bit of discussion of child abuse and child prostitution (background for a few of Cass's family). Not a ton, but it's there. If you want to avoid it, stop reading at '“Colin. A.J. Eli. Anna. Morgan. Aiyisha. Sofia. Skye.”' and start again at 'Her words are a little worrying.'
> 
> As always, if any of y'all have critique or commentary, I'd love to hear it! In this one particularly, please tell me if I messed anything up in my representation of Morgan's religion, I'm not Muslim and I want to get this right. I hope you enjoy!

Clint’s hands are flying, as are Cassandra’s. Nat has switched to speaking aloud so that the other two can hear her part of the conversation while watching each others’ words. Questions are volleyed back and forth.

_‘What are you doing in Gotham?’_

“Recon mission on a nasty looking drug.”

_‘By which she means snooping on a drug ring that claims their drugs can give people superpowers,’_ Clint adds. _‘Who are all the kids out there?’_

Cassandra smiles at that, looking for all the world like a parent who’s been given the opportunity to brag about their children. She says the names aloud, accompanied by fingerspelling. “Colin. A.J. Eli. Anna. Morgan. Aiyisha. Sofia. Skye.” 

Then she signs the rest: _‘my family. I met Colin at the library when he was eight and we started sticking together for safety. Then we met A.J. after he’d been beat up by his dad because a john refused to pay him, and Anna when she was bleeding out because her mom slit her throat. All of us were kind of like that, looking for any safety we could find. Although Eli actually decided we needed someone to protect_ us _.’_ She smirks a little at that, which Natasha thinks is entirely justified given Cassandra’s fighting skills. _‘We all look out for each other. Skye and Eli have steady jobs, and Skye’s is even completely legal. Anna teaches ASL so we can all talk to each other easily, and Colin is smarter than any of us and helps us find safe places to stay and good temporary jobs. I teach them to defend themselves. We eat. We stay warm in the winter. We steal medicine when someone gets sick. It works.’_ She shrugs a little, like she’s waiting for objections.

Her words _are_ a little worrying. Eating and staying warm in the winter are all well and good, but... Natasha knows what it’s like to live that way, where your whole world is balanced on a tightrope and even the tiniest push can mean the difference between survival and death. She imagines it’s even harder with eight other lives at stake. But she doesn’t want to force any of these kids into another life if they don’t want that, not even one that seems objectively ‘better.’ So instead Nat smirks a little and asks “how long did it take Eli to figure out you didn’t need any protection?”

Cassandra smirks right back. _‘It lasted until they saw me take down three men with guns in 11 seconds.’_

Clint’s eyebrows shoot up into and he lets out a long, low whistle. Nat agrees with the sentiment - even she’s not that fast. But Cassandra keeps signing. _‘My turn. What kind of job do you have that brings you to Gotham to learn about a superpower-drug?’_

Hmm... that one may have to be answered delicately. Nat is pretty sure it’s safe to be honest with this girl, but she does _not_ want to deal with Fury if he finds out she gave away SHIELD secrets because she was ‘pretty sure.’ Clint seems to be having similar thoughts, because he gives her the answer without actually naming SHIELD at all.

_‘We work for a government agency focused on threats outside of the... normal.’_ Cassandra nods her understanding and he continues. _‘We’re really not supposed to say the name of the agency, is that a good enough answer?’_ The girl tips her head to the side, clearly thinking, then shrugs and nods. Clint looks at Natasha and signs _‘I asked the last one. Your turn.’_

Hmm... she thinks about it for a little while. She wants to ask about the language thing, and how the girl got away from her father, and who her mother is, and how these kids are paying for the apartment, and what exactly David Cain wanted to see in his ‘perfect’ daughter, She wants to ask what the girl wants to be, what her dreams are, what kind of life she would have if she could have and do anything. Probably best to stay away from those last few, at least this early. But before she decides, there’s a quiet knock on the door.

\-------

Right. Cass had forgotten, but she had told Eli to check on her after two hours. Has it really been two hours? She shakes her head a little and hops to her feet, holding up a finger to Natasha and Clint in the universal ‘wait a moment’ gesture, and crosses to the door.

“Hey,” she says with a smile, poking her head out the door and pitching her voice so all of the kids can hear her. “All fine here. Nothing... worry about.” Eli gives her a hard look for a moment, but clearly sees that she’s telling the truth, and nods. 

“Okay. Any idea how much longer you’re gonna be?” Huh. That’s actually a hard question. She wants, selfishly, to shut herself in a room with these people and talk and talk until she runs out of words, even signed ones. But she still has to be a leader, and that means spending time with all of her family and telling them what’s going on. She knows they’ve been worried, and some of the younger ones - Sofia, Colin, A.J. - are probably scared. Cass thinks about that one and is still thinking when Morgan’s voice pipes up from the corner.

“Yo, can you pass me my sajjāda? It's almost asr.” Cass’s eyes widen at the words and she ducks quickly back into the room to carefully pick up the slightly battered (another word that sounds like what it means, this one learned from Skye when he was talking about his heroin use) prayer rug. She returns to the doorway with it and hands it carefully off to Eli.

“Give... another half hour. Then they leave. Maybe back tomorrow. I... will tell about them... after they leave.” That should give her time to make plans to see them again, which she _really_ wants to do. She’s known people who knew what she was and were afraid, and right now she knows people who don’t know and aren’t afraid. People who can _see_ her and not flinch away? That’s new. She doesn’t want to lose it. 

Eli nods and Cass sees the others do the same. She makes sure to look all of them in the eyes, make sure they’re really okay with this, and they are. She sees worry, yes, and confusion, and a little irritation (Colin’s word again), but she also sees trust. They worry, but they trust her to make the right call here. She hopes she is. She thinks she is.

So she nods, smiles brightly at all of them, and steps back into the room with Clint and Natasha, letting Eli close the door behind her.

\-------

Cassandra comes back in looking a little sad, but hopeful. _‘I’ve never had guests before, really, so I don’t know how to do this, but...’_ she bites her lip and looks down, painfully reminiscent of Natasha. Clint can’t help feeling like he needs to wrap her up and tell her that she’s more than what her father made her, more than a monster or a killer, but he doesn’t want to overwhelm her. He wants to tell her that he and Nat aren’t going to run away from her, but he’s pretty sure the only way to get her to believe that is to prove it. She keeps her eyes fixed on her hands, where it looks like she might be cleaning imaginary blood away. 

Natasha sees it too, he can tell, because her face is flickering between its normal and the shutters-closed, nobody-home blankness she retreats to when she’s hurting. Cassandra lifts her hands again. _‘I think you should probably go home. I have to explain some things to my family. But -’_ she glances up, gauging their reactions before continuing. _‘Could we maybe meet again? Tomorrow? If you’re not busy, I don’t want to -’_ she cuts off again, this time because Natasha has raised a hand.

“That sounds great,” she says, signing along with it. “There was a park somewhere along that... tour you took us on, wasn’t there?” The girl smiles, shyly at first, and then when they don’t suddenly change their minds, widening into something that lights up the little room. She nods eagerly. Nat nods back. “Well, this one -” she shoves Clint to make it clear who she’s talking about - “doesn’t function before ten, so how does noon sound? Maybe the southwest corner of the park? Any corner works, really, we just have to pick one.”

Cassandra grins, full-faced and open, and stands up, offering Clint a hand. He takes it as Nat unfolds with that absolutely unfair assassin grace of hers. “Southwest corner of... the park. Noon.” She nods vigorously, like they’d miss her agreement otherwise, and then raises her right hand to just over her heart in the ASL sign for the letter _C._ After a moment, the hand closes to a fist. “That’s name sign. And call... me Cass.”

Clint isn’t sure they know each other well enough for him to hug her, so he restrains himself, settling for reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. At least she doesn’t pull away. It’s a start. “Cass, then. See you tomorrow, Cass.”

She walks them out of the little room and to the door of the apartment. Natasha gives her a small smile before turning away. “Tomorrow,” she says, and Clint waves as Cass closes the door, still smiling wide.


	6. Explanations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘The strangers are named Clint and Natasha. They followed me through the city for an hour earlier today and then found me here. They don’t want to hurt any of us, but they were worried that I was dangerous.’ She hears a few snorts at that from the members of the group who have seen her fight. Really fight, not the way she does when she’s teaching them. She allows herself a small smile. She can be proud of her skill at fighting - she may not have wanted it, but she worked and bled for it. She has the right to be proud of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being longer than usual, because Nat insisted on analyzing EVERYTHING she had learned, which took a lot of words. So I hope you enjoy the long chapter.
> 
> I am now officially out of any buffer space, so posting may get less frequent from here on out. It also may not. The muses are fickle and often cruel, so I really have no idea if I'll be able to continue posting every day. Sorry about that.
> 
> WARNINGS for the first section of the chapter, which centers around a character on the autism spectrum getting overwhelmed and disassociating a bit, as well as mention of meltdowns. Also for minor referenced child abuse when Nat is thinking about what she's learned about Cass.
> 
> Also, I am not autistic. I have a disorder called asynchronistic social development, which closely mimics some characteristics of autism, but lacks a few of the symptoms needed for a diagnosis. This means that I'm never quite sure how accurate I'm being when I write an autistic character, because I understand some parts really well and some parts not at all - for instance, I totally get sensory issues and the need to stim, but I don't always get the issues with communication, I misunderstand important social things, but I'm usually able to get others to understand me, etc. THEREFORE, if I mess anything up in my representation of the experience, PLEASE tell me. I want to be able to fix it. Thanks, and I hope y'all enjoy!

As soon as the strangers are gone and the door is closed, the room explodes into questions. Voices compete to be heard and hands are flying and everyone is moving and it’s too loud too fast too much toomuchtoomu-

_ “Stop!” _

The room goes dead silent. Skye is standing and everyone stares at him. Sofia is just grateful. Her hands are covering her ears, but everything is still too loud, like each tiny sound is hitting her in the ears. Skye has been her closest friend here since he joined the group, and if anyone could notice her falling apart, it would be him. Sure enough, he reaches a hand out to her, not touching, but offering the contact if she wants it. She shakes her head, too overwhelmed to handle touch right now. He just smiles at her and nods before turning in a slow half-circle to look at everybody. The room is still silent, and a few of the other kids are starting to look a little ashamed.

“Y’all should know better by now,” Skye scolds, accompanied by the appropriate sign. “Sofia’s been with us long enough for y’all to learn what’s gonna give her a meltdown. ‘Sides, Cass can’t explain shit over all y’all freakin’ out.” Skye’s Tennessee accent has gotten thick. It’s strange, she thinks, but it’s a little hard to think anything right now. It feels like all the noise and movement from earlier got stuck in her head and she can’t get it out, which is stupid, obviously, but just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean it’s going away.

Cass is the first to speak when Skye falls silent. “Thanks, and... sorry.” Sofia vaguely realizes Cass is talking to her and musters a smile. Skye is in front of her then, gently taking her hands. Sofia realizes abruptly that she’s been picking at her fingers. Two of them are bleeding, but Skye doesn’t seem to mind. He grabs the long, narrow strip of fabric Sofia’s been using as a stim from beside her where it was abandoned, hands it to her. She takes it and smiles again, a little more genuinely, manages to muster up a few words. "Not a meltdown, I was just... kind of going somewhere else." Skye shrugs.  


_'Good to know,'_ he signs, hands out of view of anyone but her. _'But saying it still got them to shut up, yeah?'_

Sofia giggles weakly and nods, starting to settle more into her skin. The others are no longer silent, but they’re staying quiet, and Cass seems to be waiting for Sofia to calm down a little before she starts explaining. She takes five deep breaths, winds the fabric around her finger five times (Sofia likes fives), and then nods at Skye. Understanding, Skye nods back and turns around, says “go ahead.” The room falls dead silent again, this time to pay attention to their leader. Cass takes a deep breath of her own and then begins to sign.

\-------

_ ‘The strangers are named Clint and Natasha. They followed me through the city for an hour earlier today and then found me here. They don’t want to hurt any of us, but they were worried that I was dangerous.’  _ She hears a few snorts at that from the members of the group who have seen her fight. Really fight, not the way she does when she’s teaching them. She allows herself a small smile. She can be proud of her skill at fighting - she may not have wanted it, but she worked and bled for it. She has the right to be proud of it.

_ ‘They work for the government, but they’re not cops. They couldn’t tell me a lot, but I think they’re some kind of spies. They’re here to learn about a new drug ring.’ _ That gets grumbles and worry, especially from Aiyisha, who hates cops, and is always suspicious (a word she learned from Morgan, interestingly enough) of anyone who might possibly be one. Given the other girl’s history with them, Cass can’t blame her, but she doesn’t want her to worry, so she looks straight at her as she continues.  _ ‘You know I can always tell when someone is lying.’ _ She waits for Aiyisha to nod before continuing.  _ ‘I asked if they were cops. They said no. I asked if they were going to report us to anyone. They said no. I asked if they were here to hurt any of us. They said no. They didn’t lie to me once.’ _ Aiyisha nods again and slowly relaxes. Cass notices Skye, Colin, and Eli do the same, which also makes sense. She knows all of them have some history with cops. But everyone here knows it’s impossible to lie to Cass.

She worked and bled for that skill, too, so she’s willing to be proud of it as well.

_ ‘Anyway,’ _ she continues,  _ ‘I think we’re friends now. I like them. I’m going to meet with them again tomorrow at noon.’ _ Some of the kids, the younger ones especially, start to look worried, and Cass can see in their bodies what they're worried about. She rushes to reassure (another word from her early days in the library) them.  _ ‘I’m not leaving, don’t worry! They might be new friends, but you all are my family. I like them, but they don’t need me and I don’t need them. I do need you. Nothing could make me leave any of you if you don’t want me to.’ _

She makes eye contact with every one of them, trying to show them that she means what she’s saying. Slowly, a few heads start to nod. Eli, who often speaks for the group, steps forward, signing along with their words. “It’s good you’re making friends, Cass. You’ve got, like, no social life.” The words are a little bit unsure, but they lighten the mood a lot. Morgan snorts.

“Yeah,” she adds. “You’re like a workaholic single mom. You need friends, even if they are three times your age and working for the government.” (Cass isn’t sure what workaholic means, but she’ll ask later. None of them ever laugh when she asks them what words mean - she respects their weird needs, they respect hers.)

After that, the tension in the room seems to disappear. Morgan heads to the corner of the room with her sajjāda for salat, while Colin, who’s on cooking duty, grabs Eli to be his hands so he doesn’t have to limp all around the kitchen. Aiyisha asks Sofia if she wants to play cards, and grabs a deck when she nods. Skye joins them, still worried about Sofia. A.J. picks up his book, taken from a library giveaway, and Anna... oh. Huh. Anna has come over to talk to Cass.

_ ‘You okay?’  _ Anna signs. Cass nods back, smiling, and lets Anna pull her into a hug.

_ ‘Better than okay,’ _ she returns when she steps back. Anna studies her, and Cass wonders if this is how other people feel when she reads their bodies.

_ ‘You really like them. And you trust them.’ _

Cass thinks hard before answering to make sure she’s being honest.  _ ‘I like them a lot. I don’t trust them yet, but I think I could learn to. I want to learn to.’ _ Anna nods, looking thoughtful.

_ ‘I think you should, then. Learn to trust them, I mean. You have good judgement when it comes to people, so if you like them, that’s a pretty good sign they’re good people. And I know you get lonely sometimes - don’t shake your head at me, I know you - you get lonely because we’re all hurting some way, but none of us are hurting the same ways as you. Maybe these people will help with that. Besides,’ _ she adds after a moment’s pause,  _ ‘you could  _ destroy _ them in a fight if you had to.’ _

Cass grins at her. Anna takes care of everyone in the family, even her. Most of the kids think that Cass is some kind of hero, that she’s untouchable. Anna and Colin are really the only ones who actually try to take care of her. All of her family loves her, but Anna and Colin see her more as a person than a hero. It’s nice to have.  _ ‘Thanks,’  _ she answers, and both of them know it’s for more than Anna’s words just now.

This time Cass is the one to drag Anna into a hug, and she doesn’t let go for a while.

\-------

Natasha sits and waits for Clint to come out of the shower, a small frown on her face. She’s sifting through everything she’s learned today, trying to figure out what to do about it. 

Okay. Analyze, lay out information and draw conclusions. If, then. Facts, then inferences.

Fact one: Cassandra is the daughter of David Cain and an unknown mother. Inference: Cassandra’s features are Asian and David Cain is not, meaning the mother must be of Asian descent. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough information to draw a conclusion about the mother’s identity.

Fact two: David Cain abused his daughter trying to make her ‘perfect.’ Inference: ‘perfect’ in this context means an unbeatable fighter. This inference is drawn from the fact that Cassandra  _ is _ very nearly unbeatable.

Fact three: Cassandra is the best hand-to-hand fighter Natasha has ever met. She’s heard of a few people whose reputations suggest they could beat her - Lady Shiva, the Black Panther, Ra’s al Ghul - but she’s never met one. Inference: Cassandra was trained by some of those people, or else given some kind of other advantage that allows her to match their skill level. Nat hasn’t seen enough of her fighting style to tell who might have trained her yet.

Fact four: at some point, Cassandra left her father. Her feelings about him seem more complicated than simple hatred or fear, given that she specifically made Clint and Natasha promise not to go after him. That makes sense; even if he was awful to her, he was still her father. In addition, she said he ‘didn’t want people to know’ about her existence, so she was probably fairly isolated as a child, making her more likely to be affectionate towards the one person she saw regularly. Inference: Cassandra would fight her father if he came after her, but would also fight anyone going after  _ him _ . That may be important, because Nat would really like to rip Cain to shreds.

Fact five: Cassandra struggles with the English language, but does not seem to have any accent that would suggest another first language. Instead, she prefers to use sign language, and seems much more fluent and comfortable with that than with spoken English. Inference: selective mutism is an uncommon, but certainly not unheard-of response to extreme trauma, especially in childhood. It’s therefore plausible that Cassandra’s struggle with language is a result of her working through selective mutism. 

Fact six: Cassandra has made a family out of other street kids, all fleeing from something or other. They are currently living in an apartment, but Natasha doesn’t know how they’re paying the rent with only two of them having jobs, even supplemented by whatever Cassandra can steal. Inference: they’re squatting, or keeping the place by some other unstable means. They may be homeless again soon, which would be bad, but they probably know that. This means that they’re either confident in their ability to keep the apartment or confident in their ability to find another place to live.

Fact seven: Cassandra likes Natasha and Clint and wants to see them again. Inference: Cassandra relates to Nat and her partner in some way that she doesn’t relate to her family, making her want to retain that connection with them. Cassandra has begun to form an attachment to Clint and Nat. This may get messy when they have to leave Gotham again - they’re only here for a week. They may have to find a way to contact the girl regularly, or at least give her contact with someone else who might understand her.

Alright, that’s better. Thoughts far more organized, Natasha waits for Clint, who is still in the shower. She’s seen him shower in under four minutes when he has to, but anytime he can, he’ll take the longest shower he can get away with. Realizing that she may be waiting a while, she decides to be useful, and begins to construct a plan for the actual mission that brought them to Gotham. 

...And maybe also a script for how to explain all this to Coulson.

\-------

_ ‘Hey, Clint.’ _

_ ‘Yeah?’ _

_ ‘Do you know anyone in Gotham who might be able to give these kids a proper home?’ _

_ ‘...You know, I just might. Let me make a few calls.’ _


	7. Meaning in Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting hold of the Red Hood is not a simple matter. He doesn’t have a consistent phone number, so tracking him down is the only way to talk to him, and given his particularly... rocky relationship with the Bats, he’s careful to make finding him a difficult task.
> 
> All he really needs to do once he’s able to talk to him is get Red Hood to agree to see a sparring match between Cass and Natasha, and he’s pretty sure making his case will be easy from there. Watching the girl fight... it's something else. He should probably get Nat on board with that plan, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like I CAN keep up my streak of posting every day for at least one more day. Yay! It also looks like we might be finally getting to close to Jason's appearance. Wow! He's been there in the tags for the last six chapters without even being mentioned, but I swear he'll show up pretty soon. Really. Probably.
> 
> No real warnings for this chapter, it's pretty fluffy. Exposition and dancing, that's all that's in here. And fluff.

Getting hold of the Red Hood is not a simple matter. He doesn’t have a consistent phone number, so tracking him down is the only way to talk to him, and given his particularly... _rocky_ relationship with the Bats, he’s careful to make finding him a difficult task.

On the other hand, he and Clint have met before. Clint found himself really liking the guy, and since Hood put up with his presence for three full nights, he’s pretty sure the other man likes him back. At least enough to work together occasionally. So he’s hoping giving his name to the highest-ranking underlings he can find will get the guy to come talk to him, and he does have enough connections in Gotham to find some pretty high-ranking goons. Actually, no, 'goons' does them and the Red Hood a disservice - Hood hires better than goons for the higher rungs of his chain of command. They can be... lieutenants, maybe. It’ll do for now.

All he really needs to do once he’s able to talk to him is get Red Hood to agree to see a sparring match between Cass and Natasha, and he’s pretty sure making his case will be easy from there. Watching the girl fight... it's something else. He should probably get Nat on board with that plan, though.

“Nat?” he calls to her out loud, hands full with his second mug of coffee. (Don’t judge, coffee is the stuff of life, plus Clint needs to meet with Cassandra, get word out that he’s looking for the Red Hood,  _ and _ snoop on that drug ring they’re technically in town for all in the same day. He needs his strength.)

“Yeah?” she says, looking up from her waffles. Ah, the joys of takeout.

“On a scale of one to ten, how willing are you to spar with our baby assassin?” Nat rolls her eyes at the term and then narrows them as she thinks about the rest of his question.

“Maybe a seven? I want to learn more about her fighting style, it may give me some clues about who trained her. Besides Cain, of course. But I’m also not sure how much she’s able to hold back, given that she was trained to go straight for the kill, and I’d rather not end up dead because of an accident.” Clint notices she carefully doesn’t refer to Cain as Cass’s dad. “Why?”

He shrugs and finishes his coffee in one long gulp. “I need to show a guy how good she is, and you’re the best other hand-to-hand fighter I know. It’s all part of my master plan to get the kids a home, don't worry.”

Nat raises an eyebrow and sighs. “... Oh, alright. But after we meet her at the park, right? I don’t want to spring it on her.”

“Of course!” Clint scoffs. “Besides, I haven’t actually been able to reach the guy I’m thinking of yet. I’m working on it.” The look Nat gives him is beyond unimpressed.

“You better be. Come on, you’ve finished your coffee which means you should be ready to pretend you’re a functional human being. Let’s go scope out that park.”

\-------

Cass makes it to 11 before she can’t stand it anymore. Then she gives up and heads for the park an hour early. She makes sure to lift enough wallets and trinkets (a word she's loved since she learned it from Eli - she just really likes how it sounds) on the way that the trip will help the rest of her family, but she’s still there half an hour before noon, so she finds something to pass the time.

First, she clears a wide grassy space out of sight of the street of rocks or sticks large enough to trip her. Then she moves to the middle, and begins to sway there, feet light but steady.

The first time Cass ever saw someone dance, she was ten. She’d snuck into a theater to stay warm one night, and was woken by the cast and crew arriving for a rehearsal (a word she heard a few times that day, but didn’t really learn until years later.) She hadn’t wanted them to notice her, so she’d kept quiet and watched. She only got two or three of the words. But the dance?  _ That _ she understood perfectly. She’s never been taught to dance, only pieced it together from anywhere she could. She knows there are different kinds of dance, too, but she uses every bit she’s seen. Movement is movement. Dance is dance.

She spends a minute or two just swaying in place, feet apart and rocking back and forth. Then, without warning, she jumps into the air, left leg raised behind her until the heel almost touches her head, and when her right leg lands on the ground, she goes straight into a spin, kicking her left leg outward at the level of her waist as she turns two full circles.

Then it’s small steps on her toes before she drops suddenly to the ground the way she once saw a young man with little bits of metal in his hair do, and she plants her hands on the ground, spinning her body around them and then leaping to her feet to do another full turn.

Dancing has always been a way for Cass to lose herself, and now she does. All the words go away for a little while, and the sounds of the city seem muffled, like she’s hearing them through a blanket. Far away. There is nothing but the movement and the wind. 

Cassandra dances, and doesn’t stop. She loses track of time, of space, of everything around her, and only comes back to reality (a very useful word that she learned from Colin) when she hears a quiet murmur of “holy shit.” She turns to see Clint and Natasha watching from a distance. It’s Clint’s voice she heard, but both of them are kind of staring. She waves and they come closer, and Clint keeps talking, but this time in sign.  _ ‘Where did you learn to dance? Because that was awesome.’ _

Grinning, Cass signs back.  _ ‘I taught myself. Watched a lot of different dancers, took everything I liked.’ _

Natasha nods slowly.  _ ‘That would make sense,’ _ she notes,  _ ‘since I saw at least seven styles in there. I got ballet, breakdance, modern, Russian folkdance, Colombian folkdance, jazz dance, and viennese waltz.’  _ She has to fingerspell a lot of the names, and it’s too fast for Cass to piece together the words from the letters she’s given.

_ ‘What?’ _ she replies a little helplessly.

The older woman’s eyes widen and she repeats the names out loud. Cass still doesn't recognize most of them, but at least now she knows what they are. “Sorry about that - do you have trouble reading as well?” The apology is real, Cass can see, but she’s also fishing for information. Cass isn’t sure she likes that.

_ ‘It’s okay,’ _ she answers, then pauses to think before she continues.  _ ‘I do have trouble reading, but if you wanted to know, you didn’t have to manipulate me to do it by apologizing first.’ _ Clint laughs a little.

_ ‘Wow, I’m impressed. You just caught Nat doing what she does best - finding things out. She doesn’t mean any harm by it, though. She was trained to do that the way you were trained to fight, and it’s not a habit it’s easy to break.’  _ Natasha reaches out and lays a hand on his arm, and he stops signing.

_ ‘I’m sorry. Clint is right that it’s a difficult habit to break, but I also should have realized it was bad manners to treat this like some kind of interrogation, and I apologize. I’ll try to just ask any other questions.’ _

They’re both telling the truth, and Natasha really is sorry, so Cass smiles back. “It… okay,” she answers aloud, wanting them to know she means it. “Not mad.”

Clint steps forward, but there’s no danger in his body, so Cass is more confused than worried, until he spreads his arms. “Can I hug you?” he asks, and there’s no way Cass is going to say no to that.

It turns out he gives good hugs.  



	8. Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’ve been sitting on the grass ignoring the damp from the ground for almost an hour now, talking about everything and nothing. Now that Nat thinks about it, Cass hasn’t said much at all, opting to sit back and listen to Clint regale her with over-glorified tales of his most insane missions. Every once in a while, she’ll add a comment or ask what a word means, but the girl has somehow managed to talk less than Nat herself. It’s honestly a little weird to not be the quietest one in a conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, a chapter! Get ready for more emotional conversations and ANGST. I'm trying to keep the angst from swallowing the story, I really am, but it's also important to me that the characters get a chance to talk out their respective traumas a little. I know this chapter also ends right in the middle of a conversation and kind of on an emotional cliffhanger. I'm not sorry. This is where the chapter needed to end for the story to flow right, so this is where it damn well ends. However, if you don't want to deal with that, I would advise waiting for the next chapter to come out before reading this one.
> 
> WARNINGS for discussion of child abuse and canon-typical violence, as well as shitty self esteem in both Natasha and Cass.
> 
> Also, not really a warning, but there is some internal struggling on Natasha's part when she realizes she can't manipulate Cass. NOT because she's a bad person or an emotionless robot (and I will fight you on this), but because she wasn't ever taught social skills - she was taught how to pretend to have social skills. She was taught that all interaction is manipulation. And with someone who notices every time Nat falls back on those habits, she has to work hard to keep from doing it.

They’ve been sitting on the grass ignoring the damp from the ground for almost an hour now, talking about everything and nothing. Now that Nat thinks about it, Cass hasn’t said much at all, opting to sit back and listen to Clint regale her with over-glorified tales of his most insane missions. Every once in a while, she’ll add a comment or ask what a word means, but the girl has somehow managed to talk less than Nat herself. It’s honestly a little weird to not be the quietest one in a conversation.

Nat has been offering polite comments to keep the conversation flowing, because her training honestly makes that more reflexive than silence, but mostly she’s mulling over her options in her head. She still has a _lot_ of questions (the language thing first among them, at this point), and she’s not sure they’ll be answered honestly if she just asks. On the other hand, Cass managed to notice and call her on one of the more subtle techniques she uses to get information. Manipulation comes in many forms, and can be achieved just as easily with the truth as with lies, but the girl has already noticed a number of small manipulations that most people don’t. Most of them, Nat hadn’t even realized she was _using,_ it’s such a default thing for her, and somehow Cass has been quick to recognize and forgive every time it was an accident, too. Nat doesn’t want to lose her trust by fishing for something important when there’s a high likelihood she’ll be caught.

And something - call it intuition, call it psychic aptitude, call it whatever you want, it exists - tells her this is an important piece of the puzzle. Which really only leaves her with two options: resign herself to continued ignorance, or woman up and ask. And Natasha has always hated not knowing things.

So the next time there’s a lull in the conversation, she leans forward and asks very seriously _‘can I ask you a question?’_

The look Cass gives her is entirely too knowing, entirely too wary, and entirely too resigned. She looks like she’s facing a damn executioner, and it’s almost enough to make Nat consider retracting the request, but before she can, the girl nods. Natasha makes herself meet Cassandra’s gaze as she signs. _‘What makes it hard for you to speak? You don’t have an accent and you haven’t tried any other spoken language, so I know it’s not just trouble with English. You struggle to read, but you’re comfortable with sign. I want to know why.’_

Cass stares at her hands for a long time. The sounds of the city continue unabated around them, but their little trio is silent as they wait for her to decide whether - and how - to answer. Then she takes a long, deep breath, and without looking up, she begins to sign.

\-------

Clint is a little worried that Nat’s pushing too hard, but he’s not really sure what to do about it even if she is, so he lets Cass take a few minutes to figure out what _she_ wants to do about it. It’s her call whether Nat is going too far or not anyway.

But he can’t help noticing that she’s started picking at the space beneath her nails again. And that when she does answer, she keeps her head down, like she doesn’t want to see how they respond.

_‘My father wanted me to be_ perfect. _He tried to train many children to become what he wanted, but they didn’t... weren’t... enough. So he decided it must matter who the parents are. My mother was a League assassin, one of the best, I know that much, but I don’t know exactly who she was. She left me with him as soon as I was born.’_ This part of the story, Clint notices, doesn’t actually seem to bother her much, but she clenches her fists for a moment as if bracing for the next part. As she continues, Clint wonders if maybe he should have braced too. 

_‘He said I was going to be the ‘One Who Is All’ when I asked him about it later. He tracked me down and I actually understood what he was saying by then. He wanted me to know and understand everyone from the inside out. The way they knew themselves. But only so I could fight them better. He never taught me to speak. He never taught me to read. He never used words around me at all. I had outside teachers, but they weren’t allowed to talk to me, or he would kill them. I learned to fight, and kill, and hurt. And I learned how to read people like a book. I’ve never had anyone land a hit on me in a fight since the day I left my father. Not once. Because the only language I was ever taught was... was combat._

_‘When I left, I couldn’t speak. I didn’t learn how to actually make words with my mouth until six years after. Early on, I lived in a library for a few months. I started learning my words there. And then I met Colin, and he helped me learn too. He figured out that sign language might be easier for me and learned it just so he could teach me. Sign is easy, because it’s just... body stuff.'_ She shrugs a little, more like a twitch of the shoulders than anything else. _'It’s like the way I read everyone anyway, but more specific. Sometimes people think I can read minds, too, just because of how much I can get from their bodies. But nobody can lie to me. And nobody I’ve ever met could beat me in a fight today.’_

Clint feels vaguely sick. Natasha is hiding it better, but she’s got the shark-like blankness in her eyes that she gets when she’s upset enough to retreat into her mind. Honestly, given her past, Clint isn’t surprised. Cassandra, though, is still staring at her hands. She’s gone back to picking at them since she stopped talking, so he reaches out, slowly, so she can see what he’s doing, and takes her hands in his. 

“Why are you scared to look up?” he asks, as gently as he can manage. 

She doesn’t seem to want to tug her hands away, so she answers out loud, even though he knows now how hard that is for her. “I’m... monster. Machine, for... killing and hurting. I know people... inside... and I use... to hurt. You should hate. Run away.” Her voice is shaking and her head is still down and she reminds him so much of Natasha, with fewer walls but the same pain underneath. Fewer walls because this girl wasn’t taught to hide her pain - she was never taught a way to express it at all. In some ways, he thinks, that might make things easier now. But nothing is going to make her road easy, not with a start like that.

To his surprise, Natasha speaks up. “Cassandra,” she says slowly. The only response is a hitching breath. “Cassandra,” she repeats, voice softer than Clint is used to hearing from her. Still not gentle, quite, but closer than usual. “I was raised to be a killer. I was taught to look pretty and helpless and sweet, and then I was taught how to kill the people who fell for it." Her words are speeding up now, like they're burning coals she can't bear to keep in her mouth. "I _still_ kill people, although I think that I’m killing more people who the world needs dead these days. But even now, I kill the people my bosses point me at. Does that make me a monster?” Clint hears it as the challenge to Cass’s thoughts it’s meant to be, but he also hears a hint of uncertainty beneath that. He could be imagining it - lord knows he’s always been quicker to see sweetness and vulnerability in Nat than she is herself - but he doesn’t think so. On some level, Natasha is actually asking, because she doesn’t know.

He _really_ did not sign up to be this sad when he came to Gotham.


	9. You Are (Not)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Does that make me a monster?”
> 
> The question echoes in her ears.
> 
> “Does that make me a monster?”
> 
> She can’t seem to make herself speak or sign or even look up.
> 
> “Does that make me a monster?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JASON'S HERE JASON'S HERE JASON'S HERE!
> 
> Wow. He's been in the character tags for eight chapters, but here he finally is! I'm excited, because I adore him. Before we get to that, though, there's some really intense feels between Cass and Natasha.
> 
> WARNINGS for discussion of really low self esteem and VERY, very mild self-harm (hair pulling). Also, this chapter has significantly more swearing than the rest, because, as mentioned, JASON'S HERE. Swears abound.
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy, I'm very pleased with this chapter.

_ “Does that make me a monster?” _

The question echoes in her ears.

_ “Does that make me a monster?” _

She can’t seem to make herself speak or sign or even look up.

_ “Does that make me a monster?” _

She knows Natasha is trying to push her into answering ‘no’ and proving that Cass isn’t a monster either. She knows, but she’s not sure she can give that answer - nothing she’s seen from these two is monster-y (no, monstrous, that’s the word, Colin would be proud), but she hasn’t seen them work. She hasn’t seen them kill. She wonders how different her thoughts about these two would be if she’d first met them when they were on a killing job.

But Cass doesn’t think she can answer ‘yes,’ either, because all she’s seen from Natasha after meeting the way they _did_ has been kindness. Is it possible to be a kind monster? Is it possible to kill  _ without _ being a monster? Her brain feels too full, too crowded, and her hands fly up to grab her hair, tugging at it to keep herself from lashing out.

Instinct says to fight, training says to fight - she knows she could take these two if she wanted, weight on her hands to kick Clint, flip to her feet - but no. No. Now is not the time for fighting, even if she’s afraid. She refuses to make her father proud.

Clint has taken her hands again, and she notices that a few strands of hair come with them as he pulls her hands away from her head.

“I don’t... know,” she whispers finally. “I don’t know.”

She wraps her hands around her knees, buries her head against them, and cries.

\-------

She and Clint sit with the girl until she runs out of tears, and Clint is somehow able to find a napkin in his pocket (she doesn’t want to know) for her to wipe her face with. They sit with her until she stops crying, and then Clint hugs her, pulling her to her feet, while Nat stands a few steps away. Cassandra looks at her then, and Nat knows she’s being seen, inside and out, by this tiny, seventeen year old slip of a thing. Cassandra looks, and sees, and finally her hands move to answer Nat’s question. 

_ ‘No,’ _ she signs, hands shaking the tiniest bit.  _ ‘You are not a monster.’ _

Natasha feels something she hadn’t even known was there ease its grip around her heart. Until, a moment later, the girl continues:  _ ‘But you are not me,’ _ and something different coils around her heart. Nat doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say to that. If there’s anything to say to that at all.   


Still, she wants to offer something, so she takes a deep breath and tries to offer honesty.  _ ‘I am not you. But you are. You are  _ you _ ,’  _ she tries to stress,  _ ‘you and not what you were made. You are not the One Who Is All, and you are not what your father wanted you to be. You are not perfect. You are not a machine. You are not a monster. You are a person, and no one can take that away.’ _ She feels like she isn’t saying this the way she wanted to, isn’t quite getting her point across, but Cassandra smiles. Just a small thing, a twitch at the corner of her mouth, but real. Cass saw what she was trying to say in her body, most likely.

_ ‘You may not believe that,’ _ she adds, finding the words to get a _little_ closer to the truth she’s reaching for.  _ ‘You may not believe it, but at least believe that  _ I _ believe it.’ _ Cass takes a long, shuddering breath, and nods.

_ ‘Okay.’ _

Clint hugs her again and then tries to hug Nat, who flips him off. Cass gives another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile, and Nat remembers one more thing. “Oh,” she adds, already beginning to pack up the feelings from this conversation into a safer, more distant part of her brain.  _ ‘Would you like to spar with me some time?’ _ Honesty being the best policy with this girl, she continues.  _ ‘I - we’d like to show someone how skilled you are. He might be able to give you a job, and if he does, he can also give your family a home. A stable one.’ _

She immediately thanks whatever intuition told her to tell Cass all of that, because she can see the change in the girl when she explains that this might get her family a home. Skepticism - maybe she should teach Cass that word, she might like it - morphs into determination, and the girl nods decisively.  _ ‘When? Where?’ _ are her only questions.

Natasha turns to Clint, since this is his idea, and he scratches his head, thinking.  _ ‘We... haven’t actually figured that out yet. Can we come by the apartment once we do?’ _ Cass shrugs, nods, and waves, before beginning to walk away. 

Clint grins at Nat as the girl disappears into the city like a ghost, and she can almost see what he’s going to say before his hands move.  _ ‘How about we get right to work?’ _ She nods back at him, grateful for his unerring ability to tell when she needs a break and when she needs to throw herself into work until she feels calmer.

_ ‘Sounds great.’ _

\-------

Jason’s work phone is ringing. Dammit, that means he should actually answer it. Fuck. He grabs it off the nightstand and checks the time: 2:49 in the fucking afternoon.

Ugh. Afternoon is vigilante sleepy-time, why do people not understand this? With a groan, he picks up.

“Red Hood, what’s going on?” he answers, trying to shake the fuzziness of sleep out of his voice. At least he doesn’t have to be intimidating right now, because the only people who have this number have already proven themselves trustworthy. Well, trustworthy to do their jobs, anyway, even if they don't let him sleep.  


“Yeah, uh, hi, boss. It’s Ada Cahn. There’s someone lookin’ for ya.” Ada handles coordination of anything that Jason needs to come in or out of Gotham by ship, and she’s been working for him for a while. If she’s calling, it’s probably more important than just someone looking for him.

Great. Exactly what he fucking needed today. Jason rolls his eyes, but tries not to let the irritation show in his voice, because it’s not her fault shit can’t stop happening long enough for him to fucking sleep. “Okay, that’s not unusual. A lot of people are looking for me, generally. What’s different about this one?”

Her voice is dry as she answers, and yeah, he’s pretty sure she’s about as happy about this as he is. It makes him smile a little - pain shared is pain halved, right? “Well, he says to tell ya Clint Barton wants to see ya, and he’s actin' like you should know the name.” Clint Barton, Clint Barton... he’s sure he knows the name from somewhere... “Also, he’s pointin' a fuckin' bow and arrow at me, so I gotta say, that’s a little weird.”

Oh.  _ Oh. _

He hadn't known Barton was in town. Huh.

The bow and arrow is what clinches it, because the guy’s shooting is damn hard to forget. Jason is one of the best shots in Gotham, but Barton is up there with Ollie and Roy. Jason can admit when he’s out of his league. Well, to himself, anyway. He also worked a case with Barton a few years ago and they guy managed to be actually useful, so Jason sighs and rolls fully out of bed. “Alright, thanks Ada. You’re gonna pass the phone to him and I’m gonna ask him to put away the bow, okay? When he does, please don’t attack him.”

“Sure thing boss. I’m on board for not havin' weapons aimed at me, so that sounds great.”

“Good. Put him on.” There’s the soft shuffling sounds of a phone being handed off and then a cheerful voice - way too cheerful for this hour of the afternoon, good g-d - is talking in his ear.

“Hood! I’m glad I could reach you, how’ve you been?” Jason’s free hand comes up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Barton. Look, small talk is nice an’ all, but could you please stop pointing arrows at my employees? I’ve told her not to attack you.”

The responding sigh doesn’t sound promising, but then Barton’s voice comes through again. “Fine. I like this one anyway, she’s not scared of you.”

Jason actually snorts a little at that. “Yeah well, loyalty through fear is all well and good until someone scarier comes along, and I may kill people, but I do it quick. Some don’t. I try to promote the ones who aren’t with me ‘cause they’re scared.” He drags himself to his feet and wanders over to the kitchen, since it looks like he’s not getting back to sleep today. “However, as fascinating as my leadership methods may be,” he continues, “you want something or you wouldn’t have made Ada call.”

He can practically hear Barton’s smile. Dammit, he forgot how fucking cheerful the guy was. Reminds him a little of Dickhead, which is  _ not  _ something he wants to think about. Thankfully, Barton interrupts that train of thought. “Well, actually, I found something I think you might wanna see. By which I mean, you really, really do, I promise. You got time to meet up?”

“I might. More likely to find time if I know what the hell this thing is you’ve found.”

Barton laughs at that, which is entirely inappropriate to any situation where Jason is being deprived of sleep. “It’s a surprise. Trust me, okay?”

Heh. Yeah, not likely. “You know most people who say shit like that to me are trying to lure me into an ambush, right?” he asks, filling the coffee machine and grabbing a mug.

Barton laughs again, which is  _ still _ not okay, and says “how about you choose the place and I’ll show up at eleven? You can show up whenever you want.” Jason considers refusing on principle, but he’s worked with Barton before. He’s annoyingly cheerful and far too fond of puns, but he’s also brilliant in the field, hasn't yet given Jason reason to mistrust him (aside from standard Bat-paranoia), and he has a good sense of which things are important. And if he’s got something he thinks is important enough for him to track down Ada just so he can tell Jason, he may just have a point.

“Fine,” Jason grumbles, taking a sip of his coffee and suppressing a hiss when it burns his tongue. He names a diner in his territory on the East End, a place he visits regularly enough that they won’t look twice if he comes in with a ‘friend.’ They’ll probably assume he’s threatening said ‘friend,’ but that’s fine with him. “But come in civvies. You are  _ not _ wearing that miserable purple excuse for a uniform, I need my reputation to survive this meeting intact. Understood?”

Barton fucking laughs at him again.


	10. Breakfast for Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has worked with a few of the bats in the years since he joined SHIELD. Nightwing is a delight with a proper appreciation of puns. Oracle is terrifying, especially since he’s never met - or even gotten a name for - the person behind the screen. He’s pretty sure SHIELD doesn’t know who it is either, and that the only reason they know Oracle exists at all is that they’ve gotten tips from them on occasion. He wouldn't even be sure Oracle was a Bat if he hadn't heard a few of the ones he is sure of talking to them. Batman is boring, holier-than-thou, and has far too many rules about what Clint can and can’t do in ‘his’ city.
> 
> And, of course, there’s the Red Hood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, today there is chapter. The muses weren't with me yesterday, not at all. This is honestly mostly a filler chapter - the characters have insisted that this needs to be here, though, so here it is. The kid who answers the door for Clint and Nat is Colin, who's twelve and kind of the group baby and the first one Cass adopted. The word she's trying and failing to find later on is 'positioned.'
> 
> WARNINGS for non-graphic depiction of sexual assault/harassment - drunk guy feeling up a woman who's decidedly not interested at the bar. Cass takes care of it, because she's badass like that, but that also means a warning for mild violence. Very mild. Also, I guess a very minor warning for ornithophobes.
> 
> Like I said, there's not a lot of plot for this chapter, but I think it's funny. Enjoy!

Clint has worked with a few of the bats in the years since he joined SHIELD. Nightwing is a delight with a proper appreciation of puns. Oracle is terrifying, especially since he’s never met - or even gotten a name for - the person behind the screen. He’s pretty sure SHIELD doesn’t know who it is either, and that the only reason they know Oracle exists at all is that they’ve gotten tips from them on occasion. He wouldn't even be sure Oracle was a Bat if he hadn't heard a few of the ones he is sure of talking to them. Batman is boring, holier-than-thou, and has far too many rules about what Clint can and can’t do in ‘his’ city.

And, of course, there’s the Red Hood. Clint actually likes him a lot, although it does seem like any time they work together, he ends up doing inordinate amounts of paperwork for SHIELD. One of Clint’s favorite things about the man is how much they agree about the Bat. Also, Hood is the only one of Batman’s brood who doesn’t freak out when they work together and Clint has to kill someone. It’s refreshing.

Most importantly, though, Hood has a notorious soft spot for kids. Clint is counting on Cass to get him interested and that soft spot to get him invested.

Now that they’ve got a time and place, he and Nat drop by the apartment to let Cass know. The door is answered by a kid with crutches - Clint still doesn’t know which faces connect with which names, he should really fix that - who gives them a suspicious look, and says “if you turn out to be bad for her,  _ Natasha, Clint, _ I will personally train six hundred pigeons to follow and attack you at all times.” Clint blinks, but before he can come up with anything to say to that, the kid is turning. “Cass! It’s your new friends!” He gives them a mildly terrifying smile and limps over to what looks like a card game with a couple of the other kids.

Clint can’t say he’s ever been threatened like that before.

He doesn’t get much chance to think about it, because then Cass is there. It’s a little hard to reconcile the girl before them - literally bouncing up to the door to greet them - with the one who was crying in front of them a few hours before. He wonders if any of the kids here know about Cassandra’s past. It’s possible, but if she was willing to spill her guts to two virtual strangers, it could be a sign that she’s a very open person, or it could mean that she feels starved of connection with people who know her for  _ her _ . 

Dammit, he’s starting to analyze everything like Nat does. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing.

Cass waves hello and then signs  _ ‘you got a time? Place?’ _ Clint nods. 

_ ‘Quarter past eleven at the Roundhouse Diner. We’ll probably end up going somewhere else so you and Nat can spar without drawing attention, but that’s where to meet us.’ _ He’s still amused about the name of Hood’s pick. It’s just so very  _ him. _

Cass nods eagerly and hugs Clint, then turns to Nat, head tilted in a question. Nat smiles and steps backwards.  _ ‘We’ll see you later, Cass.’ _

Clint gives Natasha a  _ look _ as they leave. She glares back. “Come on, we’ve got work to do, idiot.”

\-------

Cass is... unsure... what to expect. Clint and Natasha talked about getting her family a real home, which is great, but they also said they might be able to find her a job with someone who needed to know how she fights. That’s less great. She doesn't want to fight on anyone's orders ever again.  


Still, if they offer her a job she doesn’t want, they can’t make her take it. She smirks a little. She’d like to see them try.

She does have to explain to her family where she’s going this late at night, though, which is hard. She’s not sure how much to tell. She doesn’t want the kids to worry, but they’ll worry if they don’t know where she is  _ or _ if they know she’s going to be sparring (that word is from before: one of her teachers said it to her when they were training. He didn’t come back after that) with someone. In the end, she tells them that her new friends think they might have found a good job for her in the city, one where she won’t have to leave them. She makes sure to look all of them in the eye - she can’t leave them scared she’s not going to be there for them. She’ll  _ always _ be there. Always.  


Once she feels like they believe her, she changes to light clothes, but with only a few holes, clothes she can spar in. Then, since this is Gotham at night, she adds her long coat and an extra pair of socks before she leaves.

She actually knows where the Roundhouse Diner is - it’s not far from Crime Alley, and she knows the Alley the way only a Gotham street rat can. Street rat... she learned that from Skye, that’s right, because she thought it meant real rats. She smiles at the memory. It only takes her fifteen minutes of walking to get there, but she does a quick check for danger around the place first. She sees Clint and Natasha through the window of the diner, but doesn’t show herself yet. Once she’s done a full check around the block without finding anything, she shrugs and goes inside. They don't bother asking her age.  


Natasha has herself... posi- poisoned? No, that’s not it at all. Positive? Posished? No, that’s not even a word. Probably isn’t a word. She can’t find the right one. Oh well. Natasha is watching the door. Clint is watching the rest of the people in the diner. Natasha waves when she sees Cass and Cass walks over slowly, doing her own check for danger  _ inside _ the place. That one woman has a switchblade, but it’s not out. There’s a guy near the bar who’s getting drunk and touching a woman who really doesn’t want to be touched. There’s a man with scraped knuckles who probably works for a villain - Penguin, maybe, or Mask, not one of the really weird ones - but he doesn’t seem to want a fight. It looks like he’s here for some kind of meeting, which means it’s probably safer to ignore him than not.

She doesn’t pause, but she does move a little out of her way when she passes the bar and manages to ‘accidentally' spill something brightly colored and alcoholic on the man who’s still touching the woman too much. She trips him as he stumbles back, and he hits his head on a chair. No one even looks up. When she reaches the table with Natasha and Clint, Natasha actually gives a real smile. “That was nicely done. If I hadn’t been watching you, I wouldn’t have noticed you did anything.” Cass smiles back and Clint high-fives her.

Cass can’t read the menu, at least not without a lot of time, so she orders the same thing as Clint when someone comes over to see what they want. She doesn't know the word, but it ends up being something with eggs and cheese and vegetables. Ha! Natasha rolls her eyes for some reason, but Clint just shrugs at her, laughter in his body. “What? Breakfast for dinner is a perfectly acceptable form of nutrition.” The older woman sighs, but Cass can see it isn’t real, so she’s not worried.

After a little while, the bar quiets for a moment. Not very long, but long enough for Cass to look up, and - oh. Why is the Red Hood here?


	11. Questions and No Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jason walks in, he smiles behind the hood - the place is just the same as ever. A few of the regulars even wave at him, but unfortunately, he's not exactly here for social reasons.
> 
> The reason he's here is the wiry blonde man sitting at one of the booths with a truly stunning redhead and a teenage girl. A skinny teenage girl dressed in shitty, ragged clothing and scarfing down her food while still keeping a wary eye on everyone around her. The woman is clearly watching the door and Barton is watching the rest of the diner, but the girl is keeping an eye on all of it anyway. All signs point to street rat, but if that’s what she is, why’s she here with Hawkeye and the woman who he strongly suspects is the Black Widow?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is longer than most sections with a single POV, but Jason insisted on drawing on his training and going all detective on everything, so there's a LOT of internal monologuing. If that's not your thing, this is probably not your chapter. There's not a lot of ASL here because they're all eating and their hands are full. 
> 
> WARNINGS for implied malnutrition and vaguely mentioned homelessness.
> 
> Comments have been known to cause me to make noises humans should not make. They make me super happy. If you have thoughts about the story, PLEASE share them, I get just as excited about constructive criticism as complements. Sometimes more, because criticism implies that the critic thinks the story is worth making better. Whatever your thoughts, I'd be delighted to see them!

When Jason walks in, he smiles behind the hood - the place is just the same as ever. A few of the regulars even wave at him, but unfortunately, he's not exactly here for social reasons.

The reason he's here is the wiry blonde man sitting at one of the booths with a truly stunning redhead and a teenage girl. A skinny teenage girl dressed in shitty, ragged clothing and scarfing down her food while still keeping a wary eye on everyone around her. The woman is clearly watching the door and Barton is watching the rest of the diner, but the girl is keeping an eye on all of it anyway. All signs point to street rat, but if that’s what she is, why’s she here with Hawkeye and the woman who he strongly suspects is the Black Widow?

Barton trusts the woman to watch his back like she's a partner, and he's heard reports that the Black Widow has been seen working with Hawkeye. The woman has the Widow's dramatic red hair, almost like Barbie's, and cold, calculating eyes. She also has a weird way of moving her hands - like she's showing them off or some shit. She acts like it's habit to seduce everyone around her. So yeah, probably the Widow. 

He thinks the girl also moves weirdly, but he can't quite figure out why. It reminds him a little bit of... someone, but fuck, he's not sure who.

Barton is just Barton.

He saunters over to their table, and while a couple of people stare at him, everyone here except Barton, the woman, and maybe the girl is from this area, and all the locals know that poking into others' shit is a good way to get dead. Keep your head down and your eyes closed and you might survive, that's how people live around here. So mostly they stick very deliberately to whatever they were doing before he walked in. It's part of why he chose here to meet. He reaches the table and slides into the seat beside Barton.

"Hood! Thanks for coming, I know you're always busy but I really think you'll want to see this." Barton reaches over and gives him a friendly push to the shoulder.

"Barton," he replies, irritation masked by the hood's voice modulators. "You gonna introduce me to your friends?" The archer opens his mouth to answer, but before he can, the redhead extends a hand across the table.

"Natasha Rushman," she says with a knife of a smile on her lips. He can see her analyzing everything about him, from his suit to his words to his posture. Her eyes are still cold and sharp even as her words are friendly. "It's nice to meet you. I've studied your work some and you do a lot of good around here."

Interesting. He wonders why she's bothered to do any research into his work at all. He also can't help wondering where Barton picked her up. Still, she's not exactly hostile, just seems... wary. And, he realizes, defensive of the girl next to her. He suddenly likes her better and decides he can be polite. So he reaches out to shake her hand and answers "well, you clearly know who I am, but it's nice to meet you Ms. Rushman." He's sure that's an alias, based on a combination of how trusting - or  _ not _ \- she seems to be and her reputation as, well... no one. Nobody has a full name for the Black Widow as far as he knows, although if she's working with Hawkeye, SHIELD probably knows by now. But he's wearing a full helmet and not even giving a first name, so it's not like he's in any position to judge her for it.

"Natasha, please."

He shrugs easily. "Natasha, then. And you?" he asks, turning to the girl. He realizes abruptly that she's managed to make him ignore her almost completely just by adjusting her posture and staying quiet. He's impressed, but also concerned. He's becoming more and more certain that she isn't what she seems, but he can't figure out what the hell she _is_. And still, that familiarity nags at the back of his mind.

"Cassandra," she says, not offering a hand. He thought Natasha analyzing him was bad, but as he locks eyes with the girl, her head tipped just a little to the side, it feels like she's seeing into his heart and mind and soul. It's like she's just learned every one of his secrets, like she's taken him apart in her mind, turned him into a puzzle and scattered the pieces. What the fuck? It's such an intense feeling that he immediately starts running himself through a few exercises he learned to protect against psychics, but nothing changes, and he doesn’t actually feel a presence inside his mind. He just feels completely and utterly _seen_.

Ooookay then. That's creepy as fuck. Yeah, she's probably not an average street kid. Or an average anything. He wonders why she's here.

Clint grins at him and shoves his fucking shoulder again, drawing him out of his thoughts. "Looks like they can take care of introducing themselves. Give us a couple minutes to finish our food and then we should head out. I really don't want to show you this here. You can still pick where we go, but we'll need someplace private with enough space for two to spar." With that cryptic bullshit, he dives back into savagely attacking his omelet, and the girl - Cassandra - does the same. Natasha flags down a waitress to get the check and pays in cash. Jason notices she tips high.

Jason, for his part, is trying to figure out what Clint wants to show him so badly, and why there's going to be sparring involved. Although... he didn't actually say anyone would be sparring, just that they'd need a similar amount of space. Still, they're clearly not carrying around anything enormous, so is it some kind of magic? Because magic is bullshit and he's had enough for two lifetimes. A technology demonstration, maybe, but that could be just about anything. Doesn't narrow it down much, so he goes on to other possibilities. Maybe something alive that Barton wants to give space? But again, where could it be now? With those options, it's either some kind of tech or there actually will be sparring. And again, he has to wonder what Clint wants to show him that could possibly involve sparring. He's  _ pretty _ sure - not one hundred percent, but pretty sure - that the archer wouldn't make this big a deal just to spar with Jason or some shit. 

But it looks like he's about to find out, because Clint has finished his food and is standing up, making shoo-ing motions at Jason to get him out of the booth and out of the way. He goes, watching the way Cassandra and Natasha move - oh shit, yeah, Natasha is definitely an assassin. Seduction training too, he'd bet. As for Cassandra... probably an assassin too, but there's still that naggingly familiar quality to her movements. He can't quite place it. Well, he'll figure it out or he won't, so he tries not to stew over it. 

Clint looks at him as they all step into the tiny parking lot. Jason's bike is there, undisturbed. He's still in his territory, and the people around here know to leave that particular bike the fuck alone.

A little like everyone knows to leave the Batmobile alone, he thinks with a smirk.

"So, you got an idea for where we can go?" Clint says, and Jason notices that his hands move as he talks. Looks like ASL, like he's signing the same words he's speaking. He wonders briefly if Natasha or Cassandra are deaf, but he postpones that particular question to answer the one he was asked. This night has given him a thousand unanswered questions, honestly. He can take one more.

"Yeah, I've got a safehouse we can use. You guys got a ride?"

Clint nods while Cassandra looks uncertain. Well, Jason figures they'll work it out. "Great," he responds with a grin as he hops onto his bike. "Follow me."


	12. Influences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass is happy as she and Natasha slowly circle each other. Fighting really is her first language, and there’s something about sparring that just feels right. This is home, the mat beneath her feet, the smell of sweat and dust in the air, the constant movement, the person in front of her. She forgets about all the words and all the worries, lets go of everything, of noticing anything except here and now. The space outside the mats falls away, her opponent’s name, the memory of learning the word ‘opponent,’ even her own name leaves and she just is.
> 
> Words aren’t needed here. She lets them go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally at a point in the story I've been waiting for for a long time: Cass and Nat actually get to spar! Yay! And Jason, who trained with a lot of the League at different points, sees some things Clint and Natasha didn't.
> 
> WARNINGS for violence (nobody gets badly hurt, but there will be bruises) and discussion of abuse (Cass's background). Also, I'm not entirely sure if this needs a warning, but when Cass is fighting, she stops really thinking in words. This seems a little like a dissociative episode. It also makes the writing a little bit disjointed and potentially difficult to read, so be careful of that I guess?
> 
> I'm not thrilled with this chapter, but mostly just because I've made way too many passes with the editing machetes and I'm hyperaware of anything that could possibly be better if phrased a different way. I think it's actually fine, though, and I hope y'all enjoy!

Convincing Cass to take the car with Clint and Nat is harder than expected, but once he thinks about it, Clint realizes that it’s probably just the automatic wariness of a street kid about getting in a car with  _ anybody _ . Once he figures that out, he’s able to talk her around pretty easily. It helps that she can tell he’s not lying.

So Cass joins them in the unobtrusive soccer-mom minivan they use for trips where they need to drive. Nobody looks twice at a soccer-mom van, and you can hide a truly impressive amount of weaponry in the things. Also, good gas mileage. 

Red Hood leads them to a safehouse, as promised, and shows them where to park so they won’t have their car stolen. Probably. Whatever. The safehouse itself is actually pretty large, having taken over the basement of an abandoned construction site, and even has a sort of gym space with training equipment. 

“Nice place,” he says, signing the same thing to make it easier for Cass. 

He also interprets the Hood’s response - “I’m pretty fond of it myself. You better not break it,” - since the voice modulator and lack of ability to lip-read always make understanding the man a bit harder for him. He knows Cass isn't deaf, but he’s worried the modulator, at least, might make things harder on her as well. She generally doesn’t seem to have trouble _understanding_ spoken language, just speaking it, but he knows that when something distorts words in a language he doesn’t know super well, it’s a lot harder for him to understand them, so he’s guessing it’s similar for her with _any_ language. 

She smiles at him and signs  _ ‘thanks,’ _ so he’s pretty sure he was right.

But Hood’s words remind him why they’re here, so he looks at Cass and signs  _ ‘time to get ready to spar. Wait till I say go, though.’ _ She nods, excitement flashing in her eyes, and drops her coat at the edge of the mats in the training area. Natasha joins her, and he knows her well enough to tell she’s also excited. If he can see it, he’s sure Cass can too, and he’s glad. This is a demonstration, but it’s still meant to be friendly.

He grabs Red Hood’s arm and leads him away. “Alright, this is what I wanted to show you. Watch. Now, ready-”

“Wait, Barton, what the hell?” He can feel Hood’s glare through the helmet.

Clint pauses and rolls his eyes. “What?”

“Why the fuck is the Black Widow facing a tiny, teenage street rat? It’s pretty obvious she’s trained some, but this...” He trails off, shaking his head.

Clint sighs. He sort of expected this, what with the soft spot for kids and everything, but he was really hoping to avoid it. “Look, just watch. It's okay, you’ll see. Go!” he shouts before the Hood can interrupt more. The women on the mats fly into action.

\-------

Cass is happy as she and Natasha slowly circle each other. Fighting really is her first language, and there’s something about sparring that just feels  _ right _ . This is home, the mat beneath her feet, the smell of sweat and dust in the air, the constant movement, the person in front of her. She forgets about all the words and all the worries, lets go of everything, of noticing anything except _ here _ and  _ now _ . The space outside the mats falls away, her opponent’s name, the memory of learning the word ‘opponent,’ even her own name leaves and she just  _ is _ .

Words aren’t needed here. She lets them go.

The woman waits to attack. Cass will have to move first. Better if opponent moves first, but doesn’t matter. Once woman moves, Cass wins. She comes at woman, feint to the right, kick to the left. Woman tries to grab leg, Cass sees it coming and foot goes higher than grab, crashes into woman’s face. Splits lip.

Woman doesn’t falter, tries to sweep Cass’s legs. Cass lets her, drops, uses moment where too low for fists and too close for legs to get behind and hit  _ hard _ to kidneys. Opponent twists so punch doesn’t hit as hard, but Cass sees it hurt. Slows enough for Cass to get her in headlock.

Woman breaks hold, stomps Cass’s instep before Cass can move foot, but Cass drives knee into back of opponent’s knee. Woman stumbles as she pulls away. Cass barely notices pain.

Lets woman get space. Watches. Woman comes at her, throws kick hard enough to knock down if connects with stomach. It doesn’t, Cass side steps, grabs woman’s leg like she tried do to Cass earlier, begins turn like going to throw woman. Sees woman adjust to use momentum from throw. Abruptly pulls back and up on leg, flips woman onto side, facing away from Cass.

Before she gets up, Cass on her and pins face-down to ground. Woman tries to break hold, can’t. Taps out.

Entire spar takes 32 seconds.

Slowly, the rest of the world begins to come back, filtering into the unthinking  _ movingfightingbreathing _ of the spar. She stands and the wo - no, Natasha, she knows the word for this person - climbs to her feet as well.

She remembers people were watching. The Red Hood and Clint. Right. She tries to focus on them, their words - no, names - as she pulls her brain back into the world and out of the fight. It’s always hard to get out of the fighting place her mind goes to. She was there for so long with her father that whenever she goes there now, her brain tries to stay.

She manages it though, so she understands when the Red Hood, whose whole body is screaming  _ confusion, _ makes a weird noise and then chokes out “Shiva. That’s- I  _ knew _ there was- that’s what was weird about how you move! You move like Shiva. Jesus fuck, you  _ fight _ like  _ Lady Shiva. _ ” There’s a pause. “Holy  _ shit. _ ”

\-------

Jason lunges forward when Barton calls ‘go,’ because no matter  _ what _ kind of training this girl has, she’s still just a kid and that’s the fucking  _ Black Widow _ . But Barton holds him back just long enough to see the first blows exchanged and the shock freezes him where he stands.

Because this girl - this scrawny, teenage girl - is not just holding her own. She’s  _ wiping the floor _ with the Black Widow. 

He watches, eyes wide, as the visual display inside the helmet counts up hits landed and hits missed and begins to analyze her style and potential influences. The Widow lands one hit on the girl. One. And the fight is over in 32 seconds.

But more important than that is that even without the helmet’s computer running analysis, he would recognize a few of the influences. He sees Talia al Ghul, Onyx, Deathstroke. But the two strongest influences are David Cain and Lady Shiva.

And the thing is, most of the people on that list take a lot of students. People who fight like Onyx or David Cain aren’t uncommon. But Lady Shiva... no one fights like Shiva.

Except, apparently, this random Gotham street rat with the skill to easily beat the Black Widow. And now he realizes what was bothering him about how Cassandra moves. “Shiva. That’s- I  _ knew _ there was- that’s what was weird about how you move! You move like Shiva. You- you  _ fight _ like  _ Lady Shiva. _ Holy  _ shit. _ ”

He’s starting to get why Barton wanted him to see this.

Cassandra, who’s standing there not even winded, shrugs. “Had... many teachers. Learned many things. Shiva... could have been teacher. Maybe.”   
  


Jason frowns at the way she speaks. “Is English not your first language? I can speak a lot of languages if you prefer something else.” Although, he thinks, remembering Barton earlier, ASL is unfortunately not one of them. Damn.

The girl grimaces like he just asked a much harder question than he thinks he did, which begins to make more sense when she answers. “No... first language but... fighting. Learned to fight... hurt, kill... not speak.” And suddenly the pieces fall into place. Primary influences: Lady Shiva, David Cain, a few other League assassins. Taught to fight, not speak. 

His mouth falls open as he remembers whispers and rumors from his time with the League, about Cain’s project to create the perfect warrior, about the failures, about Lady Shiva having had a child... and about a title he never got to match with a face.

“You’re... holy fuck. You’re the One Who Is All.”

Her head snaps up at that and he feels like she’s looking into his soul again. “ _ No, _ ” she snarls. “Not anymore. Not  _ ever. _ ”

For once, Jason can’t think of anything to say.


	13. Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Red Hood has fallen silent, so perhaps she can start getting some answers. “So, Cass,” she begins, “did you know him during your training?” It’s a manipulation, and she knows Cass will see it, but hopefully she’ll also see that Nat is looking for information from the Hood, not from her. The goal is to get him to volunteer the answer, using the cultural expectations placed on men and the fact that people generally like to show it when they have knowledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's chapter is slightly shorter than usual, but I wanted to get it posted today. All of it's Natasha's POV, because my girl is brilliant and analyzes everything she sees or hears, so a lot of it is her putting together pieces of the puzzle in her head. I think I managed to keep it paced pretty much on par with the rest of the story, though.
> 
> WARNINGS for mentions of child abuse, child soldiers, and brainwashing.
> 
> Also, Natasha sees all the Robins and Batgirls as child soldiers. This doesn't exactly reflect my opinion of them (it's all complicated), but it is how she sees it, and that comes through with her POV. I hope y'all enjoy!

Well now. Isn’t that interesting? Although Natasha is really starting to get a little tired of the seemingly endless number of unanswered questions that surround Cass.

For instance: Where did the Red Hood hear the name ‘One Who Is All?’ How much does he know about that particular... project? Was he involved? (Does she need to destroy him for helping do this to a little girl?) Where did the Red Hood get to know Lady Shiva’s fighting style so well that he can recognize it in someone else? Did he train with her? Why does Cassandra fight so much like Lady Shiva it’s recognizable? Did  _ she _ train with her? 

And those are just the questions brought up by the Hood’s words. Nat also has to do some serious post-analysis of the fight, study the girl’s style. She recognized Aikido, Kung Fu, and Krav Maga during the match, but it was so short - and Cassandra’s style so indecipherable - that it was difficult to see much else. The thing is, the girl fights like it’s instinct to her. Not like she’s drawing on specific moves she was taught, but like every strike is something she’s making up on the spot - even the ones that Natasha  _ knows _ come from specific sources. It’s... disconcerting, to say the least.

The Red Hood has fallen silent, so perhaps she can start getting some answers. “So, Cass,” she begins, “did you know him during your training?” It’s a manipulation, and she knows Cass will see it, but hopefully she’ll also see that Nat is looking for information from the Hood, not from her. The goal is to get him to volunteer the answer, using the cultural expectations placed on men and the fact that people generally like to show it when they have knowledge.

Cass must be willing to play along for now, because she signs her answer without remarking on the manipulation.  _ ‘No, I’ve never met him before.’ _ She hesitates.  _ ‘But I think only the League of Assassins knew the name “One Who Is All.”’ _ Hmm. Very interesting. That means the Red Hood is either affiliated with the League or heard the title from someone who was.

He shifts, and she and Cass both look at him. He sighs then, an odd, grating sound through the voice modulator on the helmet, and reaches up to take the thing off. Nat’s eyebrows fly up in surprise, although Clint doesn’t seem particularly shocked - but oh, he has a domino under the helmet. That makes a lot more sense than him suddenly deciding to reveal his identity. Clint, presumably, knew that already.

Under the helmet, he’s... young. Younger than Nat would have expected. It’s hard to tell exactly with the domino on, but he can’t be more than a few years older than Cass, maybe 26 at the outside. It’s also difficult to pin down an ethnicity, but she’d guess he’s mixed race, white and something else. He’s got short, dark hair with a distinctive white streak at the front and his face is criss-crossed with tiny, pale scars. They’re faded enough that most people wouldn’t see them, which is probably how he’s able to go unnoticed as a civilian (although it probably helps that Gothamites steadfastly avoid paying each other any more attention than absolutely necessary), but they’re there, and far too many of them for someone this young.  How many child soldiers does Gotham have, anyway?

She pauses, thinks about the Bat and his ever-increasing number of birds, and sighs. Right. Stupid question.

Hood hasn’t stopped, though. He’s looking at Cass with something indecipherable on his face, but it quickly morphs into obvious sadness. “You wouldn’t have met me, no. I... spent a while with the League when I was younger, and I heard some of the trainees talking about you. Just rumors, really, about Cain and his... project-” he makes a face at the word, “-but I was very angry and slightly brainwashed at the time, so I didn’t look into the possibility of any truth behind the rumors. If I’d known, I would’ve tried to help, I swear, but...” he pauses and runs a hand through his hair - Natasha makes a mental note about the nervous tick. “Well, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

Cass studies him while Natasha begins to pick apart the implications of his words. ‘Spent some time with the League’ is  _ very _ interesting information, but the wording implies he wasn’t raised there, even if he had to have been a teenager or younger when he was with them. It doesn't tell her how long he spent there - a few days? A few years? - but it might explain his familiarity with Lady Shiva. Rumors among the trainees would fit with what Cass said about the League knowing. ‘Slightly brainwashed’ is much more concerning than Hood seems to think it is, and his cavalier attitude about it is worrying in its own right. That's a lot of potentially useful information. All in all, today is turning out to be highly educational.

It seems like Cass has decided he’s telling the truth, which is also useful to know, because she steps forward and hugs him, pulling away before he can do anything except look confused. “You not know. Is... okay. I forgive.” She tilts her head and looks at Clint.  _ ‘This is the one you said could help my family?’ _ Clint grins back and nods, and Cass turns back to Red Hood. “You can help... now, though.”

Natasha can almost feel the Hood’s gaze sharpen behind the mask. “Yeah? What kind of help are we talking here?” 

Cassandra points at Clint, who has what Nat recognizes as his scheming face on. “He explain. My family... need help.”


	14. Said in Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, Clint guesses it’s kind of reasonable for Cass to demand he explain what he had in mind. Y’know, especially given that this was his idea and he hasn’t explained it to her yet. Turnabout is fair play, and all that - if he’s going to drag her into his plans, he does have to handle his part of them.
> 
> It’s just - wow that whole exchange was a tangle of emotions that are honestly none of his business, and he might be just a little bit anxious about setting someone off. Y’know, maybe. He takes a deep breath. Natasha’s face is perfectly still, as usual, but he’s almost certain she’s laughing at him. Maybe it’s her revenge for when he laughed at her after Cass took her down in the hallway that first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw heck yeah! We are nearing the beginning of the end, I think - there will definitely be a few more chapters, but this is one of the last major events I have in the mental timeline for this story. I'm also pleased with this chapter in and of itself. I hope y'all are too.
> 
> WARNINGS for discussion of child abuse, homelessness, and throats being slit. There's a lot of talking about what's going on with Cass's family, so some of it isn't pretty. Be safe, and don't trigger yourself. You matter.
> 
> I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing Clint's part for this story and I made my cousin crack up, so I hope y'all have as much fun with it as I did. Then I gave myself hard mood whiplash with Cass's part and ended up kind of sad, but it's a good kind of sad, I think. I hope y'all agree!

Okay, yeah, Clint guesses it’s kind of reasonable for Cass to demand he explain what he had in mind. Y’know, especially given that this was his idea and he hasn’t explained it to _her_ yet. Turnabout is fair play, and all that - if he’s going to drag her into his plans, he does have to handle his part of them.

It’s just -  _ wow _ that whole exchange was a tangle of emotions that are honestly none of his business, and he might be just a little bit anxious about setting someone off. Y’know, maybe. He takes a deep breath. Natasha’s face is perfectly still, as usual, but he’s almost certain she’s laughing at him. Maybe it’s her revenge for when he laughed at her after Cass took her down in the hallway that first time.

He takes another breath.  _ ‘Is it okay if I tell him about your family?’ _ She hesitates for a moment, gives the Red Hood a searching look, and turns back. Clint is pretty sure she just did her ‘reading people’ thing, and whatever she saw must have been good, because she slowly nods. Still, he doesn’t want her to be uncomfortable, so he double-checks.  _ ‘You sure?’ _ She nods again, more confidently this time. Good.

Clint turns back to Hood, who is very clearly all business again. That’s alright - it’s not like he turns into a different person, it’s just that he gets more serious, more focused. In this case, that’s a good thing. “Okay. Cass here is currently living with eight other street rats in a two-room apartment that I’m not sure how they’re paying for. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem super stable.”

Cass surprises him by nodding and jumping in.  _ ‘The owner died with two months’ rent already paid. Aiyisha heard about it and we’ve been squatting there for the last three weeks.’ _ Clint signs his thanks and then interprets what she said out loud before continuing.

“Like I said, not stable. Two of the kids have jobs, and apparently one of them,” he quirks a smile at the memory of Cass’s earnest face as she explained, “is even completely legal.”

_ ‘Skye works at a flower shop,’ _ Cass adds, and Clint dutifully relays it. Damn, he didn’t know Gotham even had flower shops. They don’t fit all the doom and gloom around here. And isn’t there a villain - Poison Oak or something? - who’s able to control plants? Flower shops in Gotham just sound like a disaster waiting to happen. Well,  _ Gotham _ is a disaster waiting to happen, at least when it isn’t a disaster happening, so he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Clint aspires to someday give as few fucks as the average Gothamite.

“One of them works at a flower shop that isn’t even a mob front,” he says before continuing. Cass smirks at him, and she’s not sure if she’s amused at his joke or trying to tell him it actually  _ is _ a mob front. With Gotham, you never know. “Anyway, two of ‘em have jobs and Cass is a damn good pickpocket, so they eat, and Cass teaches ‘em to fight, but she said one of them got her throat slit by her mom - Anna, right?” Cass nods. “Anna, yeah, and I know one of ‘em has crutches ‘cause I saw him, so they could probably use long-term medical care even if they’re functional right now, and I know a few of ‘em are running from the foster system, so that’s not really an option.” Whoops, he's probably babbling.  


He pauses, trying to get a read on the Red Hood’s reaction. The man has started rubbing a scar on his neck almost unconsciously and  _ holy shit, _ how common is throat-slitting around here anyway? Gotham, what the hell? But he can’t focus on that, because Hood is responding in a voice almost as mechanical and flat as his voice modulator. “And what are you asking me to do about this?” Well, it’s not outright rejection. Clint soldiers on.

“Well, you’re kind of a crime lord when you’re not busy being a vigilante, right?” Hood smirks a little at that and nods, which is a good sign. “Okay, so I was thinking crime lords generally have a lot of money, yeah? And they almost always need more informants and runners, and you’re the only one around here who treats ‘em decently. Plus, Cass is the best fighter I’ve ever met and would probably be super helpful so long as you don’t make her kill anyone.  _ So, _ I was thinking you could maybe... hire most of the kids? And get ‘em a place they won’t have to leave after two months?” He stops, and has to restrain himself from clenching his hands into nervous fists - it’s like the moment after you shoot an arrow at an erratically moving target: if you’re right, and it moves how you think it will, then you’re okay. But if it moves in a different direction, then you miss. And once the arrow’s in the air, you can’t call it back or change its course.

You just have to watch it fly and hope it hits the mark.

\-------

The Red Hood is hurting. Hurting  _ bad _ . His whole body is one long silent scream, and Cass is pretty sure he’s been screaming since she first saw him at the diner, but the moment Clint brought up Anna - the moment he said she had her throat slit - it’s like a scream far in the background (a word she learned from A.J., who likes to read and sometimes reads out loud for Cass and helps explain what’s happening as he does) came to the front and got so much louder.

He’s hurting and trying not to show it. Cass has seen people like this before, people who cover up their hurt with laughter and anger and noise. They don’t usually stop hurting until they stop hiding. Maybe the Red Hood can help her and her family - Clint seems to think so, even if he’s nervous that the Hood won’t agree. But maybe he needs help too, the kind of help Cass can give. Help from someone who he can’t lie to, so that he’ll stop lying to himself.

If he agrees with Clint’s plan, she just might offer.

So she watches him closely as he takes the pain and pushes it back into the background, away from whatever choice he’s about to make. And she lets herself hope that he’ll choose to help her family.

He breathes out, long and slow, and she sees the fear - little fear, small fear, the way irritation is small anger (she knows there’s a word for this one too, but she can’t remember) - in his body. She sees him roll the idea around in his head. She sees that he wants to say  _ yes _ but he needs a push.

“Please?” she says out loud, and all the fear _crumbles_. 

The tiny smile he gives her says he still doesn’t forgive himself for not helping her when she was with Cain, and he wants to help now. His shoulders and the way he tilts his head say that he’d want to help anyway, because he thinks children should have better than Cass’s family has had.  His eyes say he’s already glad about his decision. 

“Yeah,” his mouth says. “I’ll see what I can do.”


	15. Bearer of Good News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She comes in through the window at precisely 2:48 am, silent so as not to wake anyone. She sees Colin there and the smile that was already on her face widens. She pads silently over to him, hugs him tightly, and then steps back. The computer screen gives enough light for Colin to see her hands moving. ‘Hi. Missed you, little brother.’
> 
> He can’t help but smile back - even now, after knowing her for so long, it still makes his heart sing, just a little, every time Cass calls him ‘brother.’ ‘Missed you too, big sister. You seem happy. Have fun?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pure, unadulterated family fluff between Cass and Colin. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside as I was writing, so hopefully you will feel it too.
> 
> WARNINGS for brief, brief mentions of gangs, abuse, and prostitution. Like, really brief, but there.
> 
> Found family is super, super important to me, so here's a full chapter of interaction just between Cass and one of the OCs who make up hers. There's no canon characters here besides Cass and I really couldn't care less, but if that's not your thing, this is not your chapter. It's not plot-vital. However, I love it and it makes me happy and I hope it makes you happy too.

Colin waits quietly, laptop keys so old they don’t even click beneath his fingers as he hunts through the digital side of Gotham’s underground for anything that might be useful to his family. Major gang and supervillain activity (to avoid), increased police or vigilante activity (to avoid), recent or important bounties (to report sightings of if the person who set the bounty is paying for information), potential places to stay when they run out of time here, where Poison Ivy is at the moment (she’s usually happy to grow food for street kids brave enough to ask), and anything else that strikes him as potentially useful are added to a file to be shared with the group.

It’s what he does around here. The laptop is seven years old and battered, with keys rubbed blank from use, but research is Colin’s most useful skill, and he’ll be damned if anything like crappy equipment will keep him from being useful to the people he loves. He’s been with Cass from the beginning, and he knows that even if he were to suddenly stop contributing anything to the family, she would still love him, still do anything for him. He also knows he never plans to make her do it.

So he does his work in the dark so the others can sleep, face illuminated by the screen, while he waits for Cass to get home. He knows she’ll be fine. Of course she’ll be fine - she’s  _ Cass _ . She can take care of herself. But he still worries.

She comes in through the window at precisely 2:48 am, silent so as not to wake anyone. She sees Colin there and the smile that was already on her face widens. She pads silently over to him, hugs him tightly, and then steps back. The computer screen gives enough light for Colin to see her hands moving.  _ ‘Hi. Missed you, little brother.’ _

He can’t help but smile back - even now, after knowing her for so long, it still makes his heart sing, just a little, every time Cass calls him ‘brother.’  _ ‘Missed you too, big sister. You seem happy. Have fun?’ _

The smile on her face grows wider.  _ ‘I did - I sparred with Natasha and she’s  _ amazing _. She actually managed to land a hit on me in the fight!’ _ She seems so excited about this that Colin can’t even really worry much, but because she’s Cass, she sees the tiny bit of concern and rushes to reassure him.  _ ‘Stomped on my foot, that’s all. She’s fast, but it was just a spar. Neither of us were really trying to hurt.’ _

Colin watches her carefully. He doesn’t have her strange ability to see through people, but he’s known her long enough to read her pretty well.  _ ‘That’s not all, is it?’ _ he prompts.

She shakes her head, then hesitates.  _ ‘Don’t tell the others this, okay? It’s good news, but I don’t know anything for certain yet. I don’t want to get their hopes up too much if this doesn’t work out. Promise?’ _ He pinky-promises, a ritual that would seem silly if this was anyone but Cass, but for someone to whom the body is  _ everything _ , a pinky promise means far more than it does to most. 

She takes a deep breath, and it’s dark enough to be difficult to read her eyes, but he’s pretty sure they’re sparkling from more than just the harsh blue glow of the laptop.  _ ‘Natasha and Clint took me to meet the Red Hood. The sparring was to show him what I can do.’ _ Colin can’t help the widening of his eyes or his tiny gasp as that sinks in. Everyone around here knows the Red Hood, and every once in a while, you’ll meet someone who thinks his policy of shooting to kill when it comes to rapists and traffickers and people who deal to kids makes him the bad guy. But mostly? He’s a hero. A better, kinder protector than the Bat, one who can make people feel safe. It’s better, knowing that the people who hurt you can’t come back. And he also gives so much, creates as well as destroys. The shelters for victims of abuse, the Planned Parenthood that works specifically with prostitutes, the soup kitchens and businesses that get paid a little extra to take on workers no one else will take? All funded by the Red Hood.

And Cass’s new friends just brought her personally to his attention.  _ ‘He was very impressed,’ _ she continues,  _ ‘and... he figured out a lot about my past.’ _ Oh. That’s very interesting. Colin is the only one of the family who knows about where Cass came from, how she ended up with her particular set of skills, and meeting someone who figured it out? Having the  _ Red Hood _ figure it out? Well, that... could be very good or very bad. She keeps signing.  _ ‘He said he was sorry for not helping me _ then- _'_ oh, so probably good, then. _ '-He heard rumors about me with... with the League, but he didn’t think I was real. And then Clint said that he couldn’t help then, but maybe he could give us all a home now!’  _ Her eyes are definitely dancing.  _ ‘He said Red Hood should hire us all as runners and informants and stuff, and me as a guard or something, and he should get us a place where we can stay together and not have to leave! And he said yes!’ _

Colin’s mouth drops open. “Holy  _ shit _ ,” he whispers aloud, forgetting, for a moment, to sign. Because meeting the Red Hood is awesome. It really is. But it doesn’t always change much of anything. He tries, but he’s not a g-d, and he can’t fix every single life he touches. Impressing the Red Hood is even better, because people who can pull that off usually  _ do _ suddenly find their life taking a turn for the better. But one person meeting and impressing the Hood and coming away with a promise to hire her entire family and pay for them to have a home?

That’s on a whole other level. 

Cass nods rapidly, grin matching the one Colin can feel on his face, and silently motions like she’s clapping her hands together. For a little while they just stare at each other, breathless from excitement, before Cass’s face turns more serious. The smile doesn’t disappear, but there’s obviously room for other emotion in her right now.  _ ‘He hasn’t done it yet. He said he would, and he’s known for keeping promises-’ _ an understatement,  _ ‘-but he hasn’t done it yet. He probably will, but you see why I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up.’ _

Colin nods and holds a finger to his lips before signing  _ ‘I won’t tell. It’ll be an awesome surprise.’ _ She grabs him and pulls him into another hug, squeezing so tight he eventually has to push her away. She steps back, bouncing a little on her toes and ruffling his hair. He lets her without even a token complaint.

_ ‘Alright, little brother. You’ve seen I’m home safe, and you have good news. Sleep now. I’ll be sleeping soon too.’  _ Colin smiles.  Trust Cass to see exactly what he was worried about and find the right words to make it go away. She’s much better at speaking than she thinks she is, he muses as they both begin to get ready for bed. 

And now it’s time for sleep.


	16. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The apartment has three bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and even its own laundry room. For a place in the Narrows, it’s everything but a fucking palace. Jason picked it out with Clint’s help - since it was Clint’s idea, he had reasoned, Clint could damn well be useful. Clint had protested that he actually had a job to do in Gotham, but Jason had Bat-glared him into submission and then offered some help with the recon mission that had brought him here. House-hunting during the day and vigilante-ing at night, neither of them has been sleeping very much the last few days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super happy with this chapter. Here you will find: the new apartment Jason finds for Cass's family, Jason being adorable and doing awesome things for the people of Crime Alley/the Narrows/the East End, and reunions between two OCs because I wanted to show how this is changing all of their lives.
> 
> WARNINGS for mentions of scarring and implied throat slitting, as well as discussion of homelessness, poverty, running away, juvie, and child abuse.
> 
> Alright, y'all. You may notice that I now have a projected number of chapters for this fic! And that we're almost there. Only one plot point is yet to resolve itself, which will be next chapter, and then there will probably be an appearance from Stephanie Brown because she's a queen. But yeah, we are almost through. I hope y'all enjoy!

The apartment has three bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and even its own laundry room. For a place in the Narrows, it’s everything but a fucking palace. Jason picked it out with Clint’s help - since it was Clint’s idea, he had reasoned, Clint could damn well be useful. Clint had protested that he actually had a job to do in Gotham, but Jason had Bat-glared him into submission and then offered some help with the recon mission that had brought him here. House-hunting during the day and vigilante-ing at night, neither of them has been sleeping very much the last few days.

Today, though, he’s found what he thinks is a winner, and it’s time to show it to Cass. Jason is finding himself oddly nervous. He’s spent his minimal free time lately brushing up on his ASL, which he hasn’t needed in a  _ long _ time. The Bats, of-fucking-course, have their own sign language with signs relating specifically to their work, and the League usually uses BSL, since there’s no single Arabic sign language, but he hasn’t had much need for ASL in the last several years. Even with the refreshers he’s managed to work around all the other shit on his plate right now, he’s still not fluent, but he hopes he’ll be close enough to make things easier for Cass.

Barton will be there too, since he’s giving Cass a lift, but Jason wants to be able to meet her in the middle on the communication front. Speaking of the devil, here comes the g-d-awful piece of junk that Barton and the Widow have been driving for this mission. Jason is honestly kind of impressed they managed to find a car that banal. He’s distracted, however, by the fact that there are five people getting out of the car. He’s pretty fucking sure that Natasha plus Clint plus Cass equals three, so who are the other two?

Jason shrugs, sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and jogs down the stairs from the window he’s been using to keep an eye out. The apartment itself is ground-floor, thanks to Barton’s reminder about accessibility for the kid with crutches, but the only windows outside of the individual apartments are on the upper floors. Sure enough, two of the figures are unfamiliar. Barton grins and waves at him, and Cass also gives him a shy wave. Natasha stands quietly, leaning against the car next to Cass and studying the scene around her. Jason is getting the impression that watching is kind of her thing.

The other two don’t look like they have any involvement with Jason’s sort of night life, so they’re probably part of Cass’s family. One of them, a tall, long-haired Latina girl, has a line of shiny pink scar tissue across her throat, which means she’s probably the girl Clint mentioned the day Jason met Cass. Anna, he remembers. The other is tall and broad-shouldered, with a Hijab and a leather jacket and arms crossed over her chest. She steps forward when she sees him and holds out a hand. 

“Morgan, she/her pronouns. You’re the Red Hood?” Jason nods - he’s fairly distinctive-looking in general, but that’s what the domino and hair dye over the white streak are for. They’re less noticeable to random civilians looking out the window, but don’t give away his identity to, well, these other random civilians. Useful shit, hair dye.

“That would be me,” he replies as brightly as he can on this little sleep, shaking her hand. “He/him pronouns, feel free to call me Peter.” He grins at her. “It’s a lie, but I’m sure you understand my reasons.” Morgan laughs, a rounded, rich sound, and nods.

“At least you’re honest about lying to me, I’ll take it.” She pulls away and begins to sign as she continues talking. Jason is pretty sure she’s just interpreting what she’s saying out loud. “This is Anna. She’s deaf and mute, but she reads lips just fine, and me and Cass can interpret for her if you don’t know ASL.”

Jason nods and then slowly signs  _ ‘I know a little ASL. I’ll be clumsy as shit, but I can understand most of it, so long as you go slow.’ _ Anna, who’s been watching, smirks at his swearing, which is probably fair, given that he’s much more fluent in sign language curses than anything else about the language, but she also nods.

Cass shifts, catching his attention, and pushes away from the car.  _ ‘You’re confused.’ _ Jason is, and is briefly even  _ more _ confused, because how does she know? - before remembering the whole ‘One Who Is - well, was - All’ thing, and nods.  _ ‘Morgan is here because she understands home repair and...’ _ she hesitates, looking like she’s trying to remember something,  _ ‘maintenance. Anna is here because no big decisions happen in our family without Anna’s approval.’ _ Anna’s smirk intensifies.

Finally Barton speaks up, signing as well. “Okay, are we gonna stand here looking stupid or go see the apartment?” Oops. Jason runs an anxious hand through his hair - he’s still not sure where all the damn anxiety is coming from - and waves for them to follow, leading them into their prospective new home. Barton continues talking - "because, y'know, I'm always up for looking stupid, but-" until Natasha punches him in the arm.  


Cass immediately lights up, and begins darting from room to room, investigating everything. Anna slowly walks around, taking in the space at a more sedate speed, and Morgan begins what looks like a very thorough, businesslike inspection of the facilities, checking the light fixtures, the water in the kitchen and bathrooms, the refrigerator that came with the place, and then beginning to look for any signs of mold.  


Eventually, all three girls convene in the corner of the small living-room area, hands flying faster than Jason can keep up with, which is probably deliberate. They talk for around ten minutes, then turn to the other three occupants of the room almost perfectly in sync.  _ ‘This is awesome,’ _ Cass signs, smiling.  _ ‘We’d be happy to take it. Thank you.’ _ And the anxiety that’s been haunting Jason all fucking day disappears.

\-------

Having a job, Aiyisha reflects, is actually kind of awesome. Or at least, having a job working for the  _ Red Hood _ is kind of awesome. He flatly refused to hire any of their family as runners, on the basis of it being too dangerous (which is bullshit, like  _ come on _ , dude), but now she’s working at the shelter for runaways on 49th and Jade street (legally, it’s an art center with classes for youth), which is still pretty cool.

Plus, nobody fucks with someone who works for the Hood, even mouthy Indian teenagers. It’s kinda great.

She’s cleaning one of the rooms where they  _ actually _ do art, because keeping up appearances is how they avoid getting shut down by the cops (Aiyisha is 100% on board for avoiding the cops - been to juvie, done her time, not looking to do it again). Not that Gotham cops care much, but plausible deniability is a thing. As long as the cops can claim to know nothing and the shelter can claim to be doing nothing illegal (like, y’know, providing a _safe place_ for abused kids, but whatever, that’s _obvious_ _ ly _ illegal and wrong), then everyone is free to continue what they were doing anyway.

So anyway, she’s cleaning up one of the art rooms that gets converted into a sleeping area at night when she hears the little bell that means someone just came in the door. She finishes wiping down the table and heads back to the front desk - and freezes in absolute shock.  _ “Daksha?!” _ The girl in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably the way a lot of the new arrivals do, snaps her head up at the sound of her name and stops too, just as shocked.

“Aiyisha? Aiyisha, holy shit, you’re okay-” she cuts off with a soft “oof” when Aiyisha hits her, wrapping her in the biggest hug she possibly can. 

“Oh my g-d Daksha I thought you were gonna fuckin’ die, I thought  _ I _ was gonna die before I ever saw you again, holy fuck-” and from there the two of them are hugging and talking over each other (and Aiyisha isn’t fucking crying, she’ll fight anyone who says so) and it’s questions and answers and laughter and Aiyisha has her sister back, she  _ has her fucking sister back _ and she’ll tear down the world before she loses her again.

Hours later, after both of them have exhausted their questions and stories (and voices and tears, they're gonna need a lot of water after this) they’re sitting side by side on the floor, holding each other and occasionally laughing in disbelieving joy. Because the world doesn’t work like this, it  _ doesn’t _ \- Aiyisha and Daksha both learned early on that you can’t expect kindness from a world that doesn’t give a shit. Things like this, miraculous reunions between long-lost sisters are stories - fun to listen to, sure, but not real. You can’t expect them to be real because it’ll only hurt that much more when they never come true.

But Aiyisha is holding her sister, can see her and feel her and smell her (which is maybe not actually the best thing, because Daksha smells like Aiyisha did three weeks ago when they didn’t have running water, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s _Daksha_ ), and this is  _ real. _ She has her sister back.

Something occurs to her and she laughs again, elbowing her sister to get her attention. “Yeah?” Daksha asks, elbowing back.

“Well, remember how I said I had a bunch a' new siblings?” Daksha nods, looking a little wary. “Hey, no, they’re not replacin' you, get that shit outta your head.” She flicks her sister in the forehead and leans over to put her head on her shoulder, grinning.

“Don' worry. I was just thinkin' you’re gonna fuckin’ love Cass.”


	17. Little Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass likes the Red Hood. She doesn’t like that he kills people, and sometimes she feels awful for liking him despite (a word A.J. taught her during their reading time) what he does, but there it is, all the same.
> 
> He’s been letting her follow him, watch him as he works (except when he needs to kill, then he makes sure he’s lost her and she only finds him later) for the last few weeks. It makes him... unsettled, her silent staring, she can tell. But he seems to know she needs it. And she’s learned a lot from watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cass has now officially adopted Jason. He does not get a say in this, she is now his sister forever.
> 
> WARNINGS for well-intentioned stalking, some violence, frank discussion of killing and reasons for it, and an attack of the Pit Madness.
> 
> Holy crap we're almost done y'all. That's really weird. I have at least one other idea for fanfic (a story about someone who gets sent to Arkham for actual mental health treatment) as well as a metric fuckton of original works that I'm considering putting up. If anyone is interested in either or both of those things, please let me know! I have terrible self-esteem, and without some kind of push I honestly don't know if I'll be brave enough to share anything else. Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy the chapter!

Cass likes the Red Hood. She doesn’t like that he kills people, and sometimes she feels awful for liking him despite (a word A.J. taught her during their reading time) what he does, but there it is, all the same.

He’s been letting her follow him, watch him as he works (except when he needs to kill, then he makes sure he’s lost her and she only finds him later) for the last few weeks. It makes him... unsettled, her silent staring, she can tell. But he seems to know she needs it. And she’s learned a lot from watching.

He  _ cares _ , is the thing. He cares so much that even though he hurts more than almost anyone she’s met, he gets up every day to try and help people. The caring is part of him. Maybe the most important part. It’s also, she thinks, a part of why he hurts so much, and that makes her sad. Could he be happy and still be himself, still care for people the same way? It’s possible. Not all the pain he’s carrying comes from the people he can’t save. Cass isn’t sure where the rest of it is from, but it’s something that happened in the past, something that tore him open inside and left him bleeding even now.

It has something to do with Batman, and something to do with Joker, and something to do with Robin, but she’s not sure  _ what _ . It worries her, a little. She worries that she can’t quite understand him, worries that it might make him do something unexpected ( _ unpredictable, dangerous, _ whispers a voice in her mind, sounding like the advice Natasha gave before she left). But she also worries  _ for  _ him. No one should be hurting that much.

He doesn’t  _ like _ killing either - she never sees joy in his body when he kills someone. She sees coldness, like he doesn’t really care, and she sees a strange kind of relief when he’s done, but never joy. And he doesn’t act like other people (like Cass) should kill anyone. He thinks of it, she realizes (a word Sofia likes) one day, as his job. He does it like it’s a chore. As if - as if the caring were his boss, and the killing comes from the caring so he does it, even if he doesn’t want to very much. It’s confusing and weird, and she doesn't really understand how caring can turn into killing, but Cass is... glad he doesn’t like it.

And then one day, she sees all of that change. Something  _ wrong _ makes itself a part of him. She sees the wrongness settle into his bones and his head and his guts, fills him up with more hurt than she’s ever seen from him, fills him up with anger, fills him up with  _ hate. _ Cass has never seen anything like it.

“Get out,” he growls. She stays where she is, watching him pace the room he’s using as an office right now. He grabs at his hair.  _ “Not safe, you're not - get  _ out _!” _ The words are almost a scream this time, and his body is definitely screaming, screaming for help, for blood, for change, for comfort, for breaking bones and other screams. The caring Cass knows as the heart of the Red Hood fights against the wrongness trying to take over as he paces faster, kicking things out of his way. Cass is afraid, but she doesn’t move. He glares at her, then shouts again, his eyes burning greener than she’s ever seen them, and jumps towards her.

This time, Cass moves. She leaps over him using the height from her spot on a chair, and grabs his jacket, dragging him down to the floor on top of her. He starts to struggle, elbows her in the stomach, but she loops her arms and legs around his in a full pin. He’s heavy on top of her, and it’s a little hard to breathe, but this is more important. He doesn’t stop struggling, but the pin is a good one and all he can really do is squirm. “Hey,” she says gently into his ear, and he stills for just a moment before going back to fighting her. “Hey,” she repeats. “Little brother. Be still.” He freezes when she calls him brother, and this time he stays still. Cass smiles a little.

“You are... hurting. You want... hurt others. Think it make hurt less.” She can feel in his arms and legs the truth of her words, can feel the wrongness slowly start to slip away. So she keeps talking, even as the words feel strange and clumsy in her mouth. “I am big sister. Not let... little brother hurt. You should not hurt.” She feels him go stiff when she says she won’t let him hurt, feels that he doesn’t believe her. That’s okay. He will. “You are good. Kind. Angry, but caring. Not this, little brother. Not... hating like this.” He really doesn’t believe any of that. “Truth, little brother,” Cass insists, squeezing him a little so the pin is almost like a hug. “You are kind. Is truth. You are good. Is truth. You care. Is truth. You hurt... bad. Is also truth. But you don’t like hurt others. I know, little brother. I see.”

He gasps like he can't breathe and then she feels all the wrongness fall away as he goes soft in her arms. She lets him go, and it's her turn to gasp for air as he rolls off of her right away, but she grabs his arm before he can get too far. Then she smiles at him and hugs him for real, wrapping her arms around his middle and leaning her head on his shoulder. He’s shaking, but it’s not the hate or the wrongness, just the shaking of someone too tired to hold themself together.

She holds him while he cries, and he rests against her, whole body gone limp. And then, after a while, he pulls away to look at her. “Jason,” he whispers, voice scratchy and rough. “If - if you’re my big sister,” he adds, like he still doesn’t quite believe it, “you should know my name. It’s Jason.” 

Cassandra grins at her brother like he’s the best thing in the world.


	18. Motivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey Barbie.” 
> 
> Barbara sighs. “What do you need, Hood.” She cuts him off as he tries to claim it’s a social call, because she knows Jason, and he doesn’t talk to any of the Bats unless he feels he absolutely has to. Not that Babs doesn’t sometimes feel the same, because honestly these idiots are going to be the death of her, but still. She’s not stupid.
> 
> “It’s about Barton, isn’t it.” The words aren’t a question. “Are you upset I gave him your number?”
> 
> She’s pretty sure she knows the answer, and is actually a little surprised by the one she gets. “Yes and no.”
> 
> “Meaning?”
> 
> “Yes, it’s about Barton, no I’m not upset at you. I need you to hack SHIELD.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the last chapter! Wow! It's a bit longer than usual, so I hope y'all enjoy that, and did I decide to introduce a new character in the very last chapter? Yes, yes I did. Oracle does what she wants.
> 
> WARNINGS for minor discussion of violence, homelessness, the foster system, and very, very brief mention of guns.
> 
> Holy shit, everyone! We made it! 18 chapters! Fun fact, it's 18 because I'm Jewish and it's an important number in my culture. It's supposed to represent life, which I thought was fitting. Anyway, thank you all for your feedback and just for reading. It means a lot to me, no matter how cliched that sounds. If anyone is interested in my original works, I will probably(?) be putting up some of those in the future. I'm kind of anxious about sharing them, but I also want to? And I have an idea for another fanfic (what if someone went to Arkham for actual mental health issues?) which will probably happen at some nebulous point in the future. If anyone is interested in those things, I am happy to provide. Thank you all again, and enjoy!

The text comes from an unknown number, which Jason automatically assumes means it comes from Oracle. He is then immediately proven wrong. 

_hey its clint hows cass,_ reads the text, and just from the complete lack of language conventions, Jason can tell it’s really Barton. He sighs.

_ Cass is fine, how did you get this number? Do I need to have a talk with my employees about giving away my information? _ The answer is swift, and also complete and utter bullshit. Which, now that he thinks about it, might just sum up Barton’s entire fucking life. 

_ nah ur good i can do my own detective work. _ Uh huh. Jason waits, smirking a little bit. 

_ sometimes,  _ comes the next text after a minute or so. Jason waits a little longer. 

_ okay oracle gave me the number when they heard i was in town anyway where can i meet with cass i miss her. _ Ah,  _ there _ it is. Sometimes Jason has to wonder how the hell Barton has survived as a spy this long when he can’t seem to stop talking.

Still, there’s more important things to be focusing on at the moment, and making fun of Barton is so easy it’s almost cheating. For instance: Barton is in Gotham. Barton has been talking to Oracle. Barton wants to see Jason’s big sister. Great.

It’s not that Jason’s forgotten that Clint was the one to introduce him to Cass, and it’s not that he’s not grateful, it’s just... Well. Clint himself is nice enough, but he also has a job, and Jason trusts SHIELD about as much as he trusts any other shadow organization that claims to be working towards the ‘greater good.’ Which is to say, not at fucking all.

He’s fine with it if Barton just wants to see Cass, and even if he wasn’t, Cass’s decisions are not his to make. But if SHIELD is looking for an asset, rather than Clint looking to see his friend, he  _ will _ kill anyone they send to recruit her. Barton included.

The issue, of course, is that even Barton isn’t stupid enough to straight-up tell him if that’s what he’s trying to do. He could try to interrogate the man over the phone, but he knows better than to really expect that to succeed. Which probably means he’s going to have to get into SHIELD’s files, which _definitely_ means he’s going to need to beg a favor from Oracle. Fuck.

\-------

“Hey Barbie.” 

Barbara sighs. “What do you need, Hood.” She cuts him off as he tries to claim it’s a social call, because she knows Jason, and he doesn’t talk to  _ any _ of the Bats unless he feels he absolutely has to. Not that Babs doesn’t sometimes feel the same, because honestly these idiots are going to be the death of her, but still. She’s not stupid.

“It’s about Barton, isn’t it.” The words aren’t a question. “Are you upset I gave him your number?”

She’s pretty sure she knows the answer, and is actually a little surprised by the one she gets. “Yes and no.”

“Meaning?”

“Yes, it’s about Barton, no I’m not upset at you. I need you to hack SHIELD.”

Barbara raises one eyebrow so unimpressed she knows Jason can hear it through the phone, a trick she learned from Alfred. “You need me to hack the shadow organization whose firewalls were designed by Tony Stark because a friend of yours asked after another friend?”

Jason doesn’t bother to be offended that she already knows about that conversation. He knows better by now. “I need you to hack the shadow organization whose firewalls were designed by Tony Stark because an agent of said shadow organization is asking after my s-” she thinks she hears teeth click as Jason closes his mouth. “After a kid who I’ve been giving a place to stay,” he finishes.

Barbara, as previously stated, is not stupid. This girl is more than a random kid. She taps in a few commands and her algorithms pull up something she had vaguely wondered about several months back, before a major Arkham breakout had distracted her for weeks. An apartment had been bought by one of the Red Hood’s many aliases that had not been converted into a safehouse, judging by the fact that Jason himself had never been seen coming or going from the place by any cameras in the area. However, a total of ten teenagers  _ had  _ been. 

Most of them were essentially ghosts, probably street kids, but one of them was a 68% facial match for Colin Ayland, a child declared missing several years ago, another two closely resembled Aiyisha and Daksha Mehata, both runaways from the foster system at different times, and a fourth...

Well, a fourth was a 53% match for the one and only Sandra Woosan. Lady Shiva. Not only that, but cameras had glimpsed her accompanying Jason both in his work as the Red Hood and when he was playing civilian since she moved into the apartment. They often communicated by ASL, and at least once, a camera had caught Jason fingerspelling  _ C-a-s-s-a-n _ before the two moved out of range. In addition, there were rumors, although nothing concrete, that the Red Hood had gained a new bodyguard, a young girl able to take out fifteen gunmen with her bare hands. Rumors aren't exactly evidence, and what she has is all circumstantial, but Barbara’s gut is telling her something is going on here, and she needs more information before she decides to hack Stark.

Blackmail is a wonderfully useful tool. 

“Tell me who this girl is, and I’ll do it.” Babs can practically hear Jason’s scowl.

“I told you-” he begins, and she rolls her eyes.

“You  _ told _ me a  _ lie _ , Jason. Do I need to ask what her connection is to Lady Shiva? Why there’s rumors about you having a new bodyguard? Should I ask why you’re paying for her and nine other kids to have an apartment, or what she was doing with you on January 9th this year? Who is this girl, Jason?” She lets her voice soften. “And who is she to you?”

His sharp intake of breath is immediately followed by a quiet stream of obscenities in seven different languages, which lasts a full two and a half minutes before he cuts himself off with a sigh. “Right. Oracle knows all,” he says, and his voice is bitter. Babs has to admit, she hates that she has to interrogate the boy she thinks of as a brother just to learn about what’s going on in his life. She hates that when she asks him about a girl he’s been spending time with, it’s because he’s asking her to hack a major organization, not because she’s curious.

Still, he answers. His explanation is slow and halting, and she hears him abruptly change course when he gets too close to certain subjects, but by the end of it, Barbara has an idea of who the girl is. But because this is Jason, she thinks with a small, fond smile, he still finds a way to surprise her.

“Look, Babs,” he says softly, almost hesitant. She’s immediately on edge, because Jason doesn’t hesitate. “She’s... you asked who she is to me,” he says, and she makes a noise of assent. “She’s my sister.” Babs doesn’t get a chance to answer that, even if she had something to say, because his words are speeding up now, like he’s trying to get them all out before someone stops him. “Barton introduced us, and I ended up housing her and her family of street kids, and I gave them all jobs - legal ones, I swear - and she got me through a Pit Madness attack andkindofadoptedmebyforce.” He stops. Then, slower, continues. “Barton is asking after her, but I don’t know if he’s asking because he likes her and wants to know, or because SHIELD thinks she’s useful and wants to recruit her.”

Barbara nods, slowly, even though he can’t see it. “Which would be why you want me to hack SHIELD. Right. So you have a new sister who’s also one of the best fighters on the planet and you didn’t tell any of us - why?” She tries not to be hurt. It doesn’t work.

Jason actually laughs a little, though. “Oh, come on. With a story like that, B would have adoption papers filled out by the end of the week. I don’t want her near any of that craziness. If it were up to me, she wouldn’t even be involved with my type of crazy, but it’s not like I can get her to un-adopt me. I tried to tell her she should once and she fucking  _ growled _ at me.”

Barbara can’t help but smile. “Alright, you win. I’ll hack SHIELD for you. But I want to meet her.”

“Deal.”

\-------

Clint won’t stop worrying about how long it’s taking Red Hood to answer his text. Natasha honestly can't think of a reason either, but she really wishes he’d stop fussing.

“But Nat,” he says, whining a little on her name, “what if he’s trying to figure out how to tell us she died? What if he doesn’t want us to see her and is figuring out how to smuggle her out of the country? What if-” he catches the pillow she throws at him, but at least he shuts up.

They’re both silent for a little while, although Clint might be wearing a groove in the safehouse floor with his pacing, and the ping from his phone is loud in the quiet room. Clint almost squeals with excitement as he grabs it to look. Then he really does squeal, and Nat is a little disappointed she couldn’t record it for blackmail material. The words that leave his mouth, though, are jumbled and clumsy, and eventually she holds up a hand. His deaf accent gets worse when he’s excited, and she’d like to be able to understand what he’s saying, please.

_ ‘You’re making noises, but they aren't words,’ _ she signs.

He blushes and switches to ASL too.  _ ‘He gave us a time and place and also said that since she’s his sister now, he’s coming too.’ _ Natasha raises an eyebrow, and allows herself a small smile. She likes this particular development. Cassandra needs family, that’s obvious. Nat is glad that it’s growing.

The next few hours leave her feeling almost as impatient as Clint acts, although she’ll never show it, and she’s genuinely glad to leave the safehouse and venture out onto the streets of Gotham.

The city is still damp, the rain from this morning creeping into everything. It’s still noisy - she’s pretty sure there’s not an inch of the place where you can’t hear the traffic and shouting, and casual, petty violence. It’s still filled with masked crazies, and she’s pretty sure she sees at least one swing overhead as she and Clint make their way to the meeting point.

But they get there, and Cass waves when she sees them, mouth full of what looks like a chilli dog and sauce on her face. They get there and Hood is waiting in full civilian garb, laughing at something Cass must have said. They get there and Cass swallows and grins at them like she’s trying to outshine the sun, and Natasha thinks she might just learn to like the place.

That smile is one hell of a motivation.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I've been writing for several years, but this is my first fanfiction. I'm a little anxious about it, honestly. Critique is absolutely welcome, but please make it constructive!
> 
> Anyway, I realized recently that Natasha and Cass have super similar backgrounds. Then I realized Clint is deaf and Cass has speech problems and often prefers sign language to spoken language, and the combination just felt like something that had to happen. I tried to find someone else who had written it, but I couldn't, so here I am writing my first ever fanfiction. Wow.
> 
> Representation is really important to me, so pretty much all of the characters here, particularly the OCs, are from some marginalized community or another. However, try as I might, I'm not from all of those communities, so if I get something wrong in my depiction, please, PLEASE let me know. I want to fix it.
> 
> Also, thanks to CJedi, my cousin, for being sounding board, editor, and first reader for this story, and for being an amazing, supportive presence in general. Love you, hon.


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